Day: May 23, 2021

iPhone Photography

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Crab Apple Blossoms, Just Out

I’ve been taking an online iPhone Photography Course for the past couple of months. I always have my phone/camera with me so I’m making a point of taking some photos every day.

The first lessons had to do with learning about the iPhone camera features – and there are a lot of them. Next, the lessons moved onto to general photography principles – how to establish a focal element, leading lines, balance in the image…. Followed by, editing.

I took the photo above early last week (nearly two weeks ago) on my walk to the neighbourhood high school. The crab apple blooms were just out. I liked the light and shadow on the flowers as well as the texture of the bark. I cropped the original image and strengthened the contrast between sun and shadow but I did little else with the image.

Here’s another shot from the same tree. In this one you can see the dark red colour of the pistil at the centre of the flowers. I took this photo in “portrait” mode which sharpened the foreground and blurred the background. That let me consider some dramatic editing:

Portrait Mode, Stage lighting

Editing with the iPhone provides an amazing array of options, with the Photos app itself as well as any number of photo editing apps. Because I took the photo in “portrait” mode, using the Photos app on the phone, I was able to darken out the background while brightening the foreground to create quite a striking image.

I’ve been having lots of fun exploring with the camera. Not every photo is outstanding, but the iPhone is capable of taking good photos. I’m working at getting better at it. It all takes time, however, what with sewing and knitting, and a bit of house cleaning, grocery shopping. While we’ve been locked down, I’ve had no shortage of interests to occupy me – there’re just aren’t enough hours in the day to get to everything I want to do.

Escher Quilt – Finished

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Escher Quilt – Finished size: 53″ x 67″

Just finished. I wasn’t sure it was all going to work but it has.

If you click on the image above you will see the quilting detail. I thought about some kind of detailed quilting design but there were two problems. First, I didn’t have a hoop large enough to manage any kind of large block and there isn’t a really clear hexagonal shape to work with, even if I did. I defaulted to a diamond shape which is all I could accommodate. Second, any kind of detailed quilting, like I used on the previous diamond quilts, was going to detract from the effect of the rising, interconnected, vertical elements of the quilt design.

In the end I quilted the “diamonds” using a straight line design alternating the direction of the diamonds to fit into the overall array of interconnected elements.

Quilting Detail

Then what to do with the borders? I decided to use a rather dense floral quilt design; I set up a modified version which I used to fill in the half-diamond elements top and bottom. That decision turned out well.

Quilt Back

I assembled a double strip of pieced strips to allow me to widen the backing enough to fit the quilt top. I bordered the insert strip with unequal strips of a light batik which blended nicely.

I finished the quilt with a narrow 1/4″ conventional quilt binding using 1 1/2″ strips from some Skyline fabric still in my stash which let me get away without having to piece a gazillion tiny leftovers from the Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics. The binding finishes the quilt hinting at the colours in the main panel.

So, the quilt is done. I started playing with the idea on May 6 – so 2 1/2 weeks is the time it took me to construct, quilt, and complete the project. I’ve had a lot of uninterrupted time to sew since we’ve been on COVID-19 lockdown here in NS since April 25 (we expect to remain locked down until at least the middle of June – maybe longer because while new case counts aren’t going up to any degree, they’re not going down, either!).

Now it’s time to turn my attention to sewing some summer clothes – a couple of dresses, maybe a jean jacket, some linen pull-on pants. I have the fabric on hand. I’ll start by washing it all tomorrow.