It is quite a drive from the city so we hit the road early, heading for Comeauville and Panier d’Art, about 40 minutes or so from Digby. However, a little bird set us straight (thank you, Peggy – you rock!) and told us to head for Foodland first. Yes, Foodland! Well, not exactly Foodland but to the other half of the same building, to Clarence’s Shopping Mart at 10029 Hwy #1 in Clare – just a few minutes past Panier d’Art. With everything from Christmas decor, clothes and shoes, the store has a lot to offer, but in the far left corner – paydirt! There is a lovely little fabric shop, offering quilting cottons, a wall of notions and craft supplies. There is a good mix of basic blenders, flannels and current fabric lines at very reasonable prices. The staff are helpful and generous with the fabric cuts – additional incentive to pick up some fabric for the stash.

Just a short hop down the road is Panier d’Art, at 464 Hwy 1 in Saulnierville. You’ll find the store in the back through the basement door. You’re immediately surrounded with fabric bolts with a large section for flannels, another for new fabrics and yet another for their patterns and remaining fabric lines. They have a room full of sewing machines and equipment that also houses over 500 bolts of sale fabrics for $9.99 or less. Classroom space is in a separate building. Owner Anne Comeau and her staff were great – in fact, one of us is headed back there soon to pick up a new sewing machine!

Then off to Quilts by the Bay, near Digby. Owner Debra Howard’s large shop is filled with lovely fabrics, artfully arranged with quilts on display, a gallery of quilt patterns, lots of thread to choose from, and ready made quilts destined for buyers far and wide. It was a busy place – the longarm was stitching away, fabric cuts being prepared for the next Friday Frenzy and one quilter in particular (yes, me!) was busy pulling bolts trying to find just the right one.

With time still to spare, and after a quick lunch, we headed back to Granville Ferry to visit The Wooden Spool. This was a first visit to Granville Ferry but it was easy to find, driving along Hwy 1 through Annapolis Royal to 4830 Hwy 1. The shop has been open for about three years. It’s a lovely shop, bright and airy, with a good mix of traditional and contemporary fabrics. There are lots of books on display and a wide variety of fabric panels.

They even carry spray bottles of I Hate Quilting, rumoured to be better than Best Press (…we shall see…)

We headed home happy, with some new fabric treasures and a new appreciation for what this province has to offer in quilt shops. If you haven’t explored the Fundy shore recently, these four shops – and the great scenery – make it worth the trip.

Weather permitting, we hope to explore more in the coming months. If you are heading out and happen to encounter a quilt shop new to you, let us know and take a photo or two, so we can spread the word. On line shopping is here to stay but it is always a treat to get out and actually see and feel the fabric you’re buying. Till next trip..

Colleen and Jan

For this walk-through I’m going to assume you’ll be taking photos with a phone, either an Apple iPhone or a phone running the Android operating system. With the excellent quality of cameras on modern smart phones, there’s really no need to use any other kind of camera for this. Full disclosure: I’m an iPhone user and have never used an Android phone myself, so my suggestions are based on my experience. But most smartphones have similar basic settings.

The most important kind of shot for entering shows or selling your pieces or having as a record of your work is the quilt photography equivalent of a passport photo — straight-on (no artsy angles or odd trapezoids) with every bit of the piece visible and equally lit. 

CAMERA PHONE SETTINGS

1. Go into your Phone’s Settings

2. Pick Camera

3. Click on “FORMATS” – Choose most compatible because .jpgs are much easier to share

4. Turn on “GRID” (this will give you guide lines that divide your screen into nine segments — this will help you centre everything or arrange an attractive composition. It will also turn on the levelling crosshairs — more on that later)

5. Turn off “Smart HDR” or “HDR”

SET UP YOUR QUILT FOR BEING PHOTOGRAPHED:

Tips for setting up your quilt to be photographed:

HANGING:

Hang the quilt outside — on a railing or from a clothesline. For a casual shot, this is perfect — make sure the light is falling on the quilt, not behind it. 

Use a stand: I bought this stand (originally designed for holding a backdrop for photo sessions) and it’s been wonderful for me!

It can be adjusted to up to 8.5’ high and from 5 to 10’ wide. You can set this up on your driveway or patio with natural light and get a great shot! When I’m not using it as a stand, I use the uprights as light stands (see below).

PIN IT TO YOUR DESIGN WALL:

Use T pins or similar pins to pin the quilt securely to the design wall. Pinning it all around will make sure it’s nice and flat. (Note about design wall colours: For serious quilt show entries or competitions, you’ll have to take your shot against a neutral background — grey or white is always good, and a neutral mid-grey is best.)

LAY IT FLAT:

Smaller projects can be laid on a table or even the floor, or a bed. You’ll need to be well above it and centred to take a good photo, so consider standing on a chair if you need to!

STAGE THE QUILT INSTEAD OF HANGING IT

You can also photograph your pieces for social media or as extra shots in a more relaxed or natural way. Set the table with your quilted placemats. Fold the quilt and put it on a rack or ladder, or over the back of a chair. 

LIGHTING:

Lighting is everything for photography. Best of all is natural light with no flash.

NATURAL LIGHTING – OUTDOORS: 

Outdoors with the light falling on the object, not behind it. Slightly overcast is best — the clouds naturally diffuse the light.  Best time of day is early morning or late afternoon.

Full sunlight can be too harsh and wash out your colours. Dappled light can really detract from the quilt, too.

NATURAL LIGHTING INDOORS:  

Pick a room with great lighting — lots of windows. You can even open a door to increase your natural lighting.

STUDIO LIGHTING:

My own setup is to pin the quilt on my design wall and use several studio lights plus the natural light of the room to get the most even lighting coverage I can. If you don’t have a design wall and want to photograph indoors, use any wall, especially one that offers a neutral background and is in an area that gets quite a lot of natural light.

My studio lights are just the 2 adjustable tripod uprights from my backdrop stand (see above) each with a 8.5” clamp light fixture and a 150 watt daylight bulb. The clamp fixtures are easily available at any hardware store and I just clamp them on to the top of the tripod uprights and move them around.  I arrange the two lights, one on each side of the quilt hanging on the wall, far enough away to keep the light coverage more even and avoid hot spots. 

PRO TIP: You’ll get best results from artificial lighting if you make some homemade diffusers from white greaseproof baking parchment paper (it’s heat resistant!), thin white plastic tablecloths, evenly frosted plastic shower curtain, Lots of light will make it through the diffuser — don’t worry! But it will help give you lovely, even, diffuse light. If you’re using LED bulbs you don’t even have to worry about the heat — just clothespin something over your light and get going! Even with incandescent bulbs, using a diffuser for a short time is quite safe, especially if it’s greaseproof baking paper. Make sure not to clamp anything tightly around the fixture.

TAKING THE PHOTO:

Some basic tips:

• Don’t use flash
• Don’t use the digital zoom — you’ll end up degrading the image. Get closer.
• On the other hand, don’t get too close to the quilt with your phone camera (which tends to have a wide angle lens) — it may distort the image.
• While smartphones are great at stabilization to reduce camera shake, you can use a tripod and a smartphone holder for even better results.
• If you are unable to secure a tripod try this: frame the art work with your smart phone, inhale and then exhale fully, hold your smartphone steady and make the image. With practice you will get sharp images every time!

If you need a clear photo of the entire quilt, you ideally want the lens of the camera to be aligned with the centre of the quilt. This keeps the subject of the photo un-distorted. The grid in your viewfinder will help with this, too. This means you may need to crouch down or get on a ladder or chair so that you are aligned with the centre of the quilt in both directions. 

If your subject is lying flat, and you’re using an iPhone or Google Camera,  there’s a great aid for you. Once you’ve turned on the grid you’ll be able to use the levelling cross hairs. A pair of crosshairs (+) will appear, one fixed and one floating. Try to hold your phone as straight down as possible to make the two crosshairs appear and line them up, 

EDITING YOUR PHOTOS:

You can do basic edits in your phone (rotate, etc). Check out these links for specific tips:

How to take and edit photos on an iPhone: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/iphone/iphb08064d57/ios

How to take and edit photos on an Android Phone: 

https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6128850?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid

MAKING A LARGE PHOTO FILE SMALLER:

Depending on the settings on your phone, you’ll probably be taking photos that will be saved as .jpg files. The file size of jpg images encompasses two things: the actual size of the image (measured in pixels – the smallest units of the image) and the amount of compression (often expressed as a percentage of the uncompressed image).

When editing photos to reduce size, you’ll see options like “reduce quality”, “make smaller”, “reduce resolution”. Photos for the web are usually saved at a resolution of 77 pixels per inch but photos for printing need to be at 300 ppi. You’ll need maximum resolution photos for big quilt shows — you don’t have to worry about this for social media sharing.)

You can download photos from your phone to your laptop and edit them with a photo editor.

Photo Editors for the Mac: Preview for the Mac comes pre-installed and it’s remarkably useful. You can crop, change the size and compression of the file, correct colours, rename the file — whatever you might need.  You can change the file size if you export the file — Under File menu choose “Export” and then choose the file type JPG and you’ll be offered a slider to pick the quality of the image. Reducing the quality reduces the file size!

Other image editors include GIMP and the built-in Photos editor.

https://improvephotography.com/53771/photo-editors-on-the-mac-the-built-in-editor-vs-five-free-options/

Microsoft Photos is the built in photo editor with Windows 10 and will do all of the above tasks. A free download for Windows machines is GIMP — an excellent open source photo editor.

https://www.blog.motifphotos.com/how-to-reduce-the-file-size-of-a-photo/

REDUCING FILE SIZE RIGHT ON IPHONE

While there are many things one can do with photos right on the iPhone, it’s frustratingly difficult to do two things that quilters often have to do with their quilt photos: rename the files and make the files smaller (compress them)

Download Compress Photos from the App Store (free)
– launch it
– allow it access to your photos

• Select photos to compress
  CHOOSE PHOTOS
• Next
• CHOOSE COMPRESSION SETTINGS 
• COMPRESS
• It may show you an ad. Just click CLOSE
• It will compress the photo and add it to your photo library in a new album called Compressed Photos.. It’ll show you how much you compressed the file.  (you can choose to delete the original or keep 1 original — I’d keep the original)

The Seaside Stitchers share their last challenge which was based to be on a song. See the pictures on our Flickr photostream.

Finally, the Guild was able to have a meeting though on the day it was looking doubtful! We were happy to have about 38 hearty souls gather at the hall for a wonderful meeting. Many thanks to Lynn and her team for a terrific program of "Goin' Fishing". Just about everyone there participated with a tip or trick that related to quilting. Everyone was given the chance to "fish" for a wonderful prize. Watch for the tips to be added to our "Tips and Tricks" page on the blog soon.

Lynn, Brenda and Wanda explaining the rules of fishing!

The "fish" just waiting to be caught!

Show and tell was, as always a delight. Everyone has been very productive through this snowy and stormy winter. be sure and check out our Fickr photo albums for pictures here. It was wonderful to see the over 100 cuddle quilts displayed in the church. They will soon be distributed to charities in our region. Thanks to Valerie, Sheila and Leverne for all their organizing, hard work and to everyone who helped or contributed in some way.

We held the draw for the two Guild scholarships for the Quilter's Retreat at Pictou Lodge. The lucky winners are Valerie Langille-Johnson and Isabel Fancy! Both are first timers to the Retreat and I am sure they will have a wonderful time.

Plans are well underway for our annual Quilter's Yard Sale on Saturday May 2 at Trinity United Church Hall and for our Dessert Party with an Extraordinary Quilter, Becky Goldsmith from Piece O' Cake Designs on Wed. May 27. Workshops with Becky will follow on the 28th, 29th and 30th! Details are here.

Further to our program last month and the question "should you pre-wash your new fabric or not" I came across this terrific post by Becky Goldsmith (thanks to  my friend Jan at Be*mused), who with her partner, Linda Jenkins, owns Piece O' Cake Designs. Take the time to read her post and the comments which follow. There are some interesting thoughts and suggestions.

Becky also has some great videos for hand applique techniques here. Be sure and visit her show and tell page for pictures of quilts made from the Piece O' Cake patterns.

And don't forget to check out our own "Tips and Tricks" section – the link is to the right. More will be added soon!