Pixelation Paradise (a.k.a. the Pixelated Panda)

I used an amazing program to plan this quilt, but let’s start with the background story.

Some friends of ours are about to have a baby girl. The mom-to-be loves pandas and watched baby Bao Bao on the National Zoo’s Giant Panda Cam almost every day when it first came out. The dad loves computers. To marry the two interests, I thought a pixelated panda quilt would be perfect!

I didn’t want to make the quilt too girlie, so pink on the front side of the quilt is relegated to binding.

On the back? More pink… and a lot more pandas!

For once, I even remembered to include care instructions and a gift tag (back side, not pictured). I kind of hate making labels and I’m not really sure why.

I pretty well destroyed our apartment while I was working on this one. There were various-sized pieces that covered our kitchen table. Each time I finished a block, I washi taped it to the wall. I had little sections ALL OVER the apartment.

I think the finished quilt was worth the mess!

While I still hate chain piecing, the program I used made it as painless as possible. Does anyone here remember the tutorial I wrote about how to turn a photo into a pixelated quilt? I really enjoyed the manual process and it’s FREE… but you guys, I don’t think I’d ever do it again. The year after I published my tutorial, a husband and wife team developed a website called YouPatch that does the pixelation for you. Maybe you’ve heard of it. I’ve seen other bloggers write about it, but after trying it for myself, I wanted to tell the whole world how amazing it is! They’re not paying me to write this. Their website is just AWESOME.

For a reasonable price (less than $10 for the quilt I made), here’s the process:

1. Upload the photo you want to turn into a quilt. I used a photo of a panda, removing the background. Eliminating the background makes the main subject of the photo really stand out. I was also pleased that YouPatch did a great job with my poor quality photo!

Once the photo is uploaded into YouPatch, you decide whether you want the orientation of your quilt to be portrait, landscape, or square. I picked portrait.

2. Pick how many fabric colors you want to use. I chose 8 for my quilt. The current maximum number is 15. The higher the number, the more detail in your quilt… and also the more work you have to do. You get to preview the difference for each option, which is insanely cool. I would have been happy with fewer options, but I really liked the control this gave me.

3. Pick a finished quilt size. Why? you might ask. Can’t I just use the grid of pieces the software generates to do my own sizing? Well, yes. But a few things: (a) you’re crazy if you want to do quilty maths that the program would do for you; and (b) based on the size you select, the program will tell you how much fabric to buy!

4. Change out colors if you want. My quilt was grayscale. You could do crazy-different colors (a pop of lime on plum), or you could do a quilt using the same concept as grayscale (light to dark) using a specific color like blue. (I bought my Kona solids on fabric.com. They were out of Kona Silver, so I substituted Kona Shadow.)

You also have the option to manually change a pixel, which is cool. If I hadn’t deleted the background on my photo before uploading it, I would have used this feature to manually remove any distracting details.

Then you just pay for the pattern (less than $10 for me), and they email it in pdf format. Mine was very detailed, with 17 pages of instructions, illustrations, and ideas. I didn’t need all the provided info, but it was nice to gauge whether I was on the right track at times.

I wondered was whether each pixel would be an individual, standard-sized square or whether YouPatch would group side-by-side pixels of the same color. Probably I could have researched this in advance, but I didn’t. They do #2 (grouping). I love this. The pattern tells you what size blocks to cut. Due to grouping, not all pieces are the same size. I received another email when I was about halfway through sewing this quilt that said the grouping has been even further improved. There’s definitely a balance between grouping as many pieces as possible so there is less sewing and trying to ensure the pieces can be assembled into standard-sized blocks that don’t require you to read a complicated “map.” I did some minor adjusting on my own but would be interested to see the changes.

The pattern also gives you layout ideas for each fabric color to ensure all your blocks can be cut from the amount of fabric recommended.

Once your pieces are cut, the pattern the shows you how to assemble the pieces into equal-sized blocks. Put the squares together and voila! Finished quilt!

There are plenty of instructions if you’re new to quilting. I got by using only the grid (pieces to blocks assembly) because it was clear on its own. Yay for feeling like a pro!

The customer service was great, too. I actually received a follow-up email about an hour after I received my pdf pattern that contained some suggestions and even a second pattern choice. If I hadn’t already decided to review YouPatch, this would have been the clincher.

Yes, I elected to sew way too many pieces on a deadline, but I loved using YouPatch and I really like the finished quilt. If you’re thinking of trying it, I can definitely say I recommend the YouPatch program.

1930s Reproductions, Pajamas & Memories: A Quilt Story

My grandma’s death last year was difficult. She’d had Alzheimer’s for many years, so in a way, our loss was more about the years we lost during her life than about her death. Alzheimer’s also meant there were no attics to search for treasures, no inspiring little finds; those things had been done long ago. All that was left with her really were the pajamas she wore in the nursing home and a favorite print she’d received as a gift from her brother. I decided to use the pajamas to make a memory quilt.

I decided to incorporate small pieces of the pajamas with larger 1930s reproduction prints. It wasn’t until I started researching 1930s repros that I realized where my grandma got her style. All those cartoon kittens and ducks? Straight from the 1930s!

I decided on a layout that would showcase both the repro prints and the pajama pieces.

At first, I thought I would use a white background. Then I realized some of the pajamas were a little dingy from multiple washings. A quilt store employee in my home state suggested I use a darker color to make the smaller pieces pop. Although pinks and purples aren’t my style, they were my grandma’s. I decided to use a purple (Robert Kaufman’s Quilter’s Linen).

With a color scheme my grandma would have liked, I decided to include a few details that would also make it more “me.” I wanted this to be a quilt that linked us through the generations.

In particular, I wanted a pop photograph of my grandma on the quilt. I think on one hand she would have hated it and thought it was too ostentatious. On the other hand, I think she would have been flattered and would have thought I was being goofy. It makes me smile to think that she would have teased me for my selection. I turned a photo of hers into a Spoonflower design and had it printed.

My grandma was BIG on sending birthday cards, sympathy cards, letters, etc. She kept every card she ever received. Ever. I wanted to somehow incorporate that part of her into the quilt. I used her birthday calendar to get samples of her handwriting, then embroidered her name and dates onto one of the quilt squares. I was lucky she had several friends with the same first name, and obviously family with the same last name, so it was easy to cobble together her name!

When it came time to bind the quilt, only one color would do. Fuscia was her favorite.

(Don’t you love my washi tape “design wall”?)

For the quilt back, I used up the remaining portrait fabric. (I bought a yard so I would be sure to have at least one full portrait, plus a few extras in case I messed up.) I also used smaller pieces of 1930s feed sacks that I bought on Etsy, along with 1930s repro prints.

I kept the quilting simple, using straight lines along the outsides of the bigger/repro squares with painter’s tape to mark the lines. The finished quilt is lap size.

This is a quilt I think my family will appreciate for a long time. My mom (whose mother is memorialized in this quilt) has first dibs, and if she decides the colors are too bright, my sister has expressed interest. My sister said the sweetest thing, “There aren’t many things left from Grandma. If I have kids someday, I would love to show them this quilt and tell them what I remember about her. It would be my way of passing along her memory.” How could a quilt be more appreciated?! I am so glad to have created a piece of family history.

Another great thing about this quilt is it was finished in February, which means my current finish rate is one quilt per month! I don’t know that I can keep it up, but I feel such a sense of accomplishment in 2014 so far.

DIY Personalized Stamps

I thought for sure I would finish the Marcelle Medallion quilt top as designed this week (although I will add some extra borders later to make it full size). I wanted to bring it for show-and-tell at the first-ever quilting event I plan to attend, the monthly meeting of the Crystal Lake Modern Quilt Guild. (I live in Chicago but find this suburban group has a strong online presence and seems really energetic.) Then my machine’s feed dogs fell and refused to be coaxed back up. I’m taking her to the repair shop tonight.

With my sewing machine out of commission, I amused myself with other projects through most of last week. One of these was carving rubber stamps. I bought some tools from Blick Art Supply to print my own fabric for a longer-term project, and I thankfully had the foresight to buy extra rubber because carving is fun! After seeing this pin on Pinterest, I decided to make some portraits.

Would making my own face into a rubber stamp appear too vain? I couldn’t tell, but I figured if it was merely practice for stamps of kids’ faces that would accompany a homemade, educational activity book… well, then I was in the clear! Here’s how my own stamp turned out:

And these are the stamps I made of my friend’s kids:

The mustache on the top kid isn’t natural, as you might imagine. I bought them some stick-on mustaches last October and thought this would be a cute way to prolong the fun. The photo of the little miss is courtesy of Susanna Bayer’s Photography.

With any luck, my sewing machine will be ready to go for the quilt guild’s sew-in. But I have to admit I’ve enjoyed making stamps in the meantime!

Tutorial: Designing a Pixelated Portrait Quilt

Earlier this summer, the Happy Zombie posted a quilt-along called the Ron Swanson Along. I don’t watch much TV and haven’t seen Parks & Recreation, but I still thought her quilt was AMAZING. I mean, who doesn’t love a giant, quilted moustache? Although I haven’t gotten far on my sampler quilt and have at least a few others in the works, I couldn’t help taking a closer look.

One of her blog followers commented that when she is sick, it would be comforting to cuddle up with Ron via her quilt. That got me thinking. Who else is comforting and might make a good quilt image?

My friend Jessica lost her dad several years ago–around the time I met her. I was with her a few years later on the anniversary of his death. We were traveling together in Japan for work, and over the weekend, we just happened to be visiting a temple where people were painting memorial tiles for the roof. She painted one in memory of her dad.

I thought a lot about her dad and the tile she painted. There was something beautiful about that moment, such love. I wanted to capture it somehow. At first, I thought I could paint his portrait, but the photos I wanted to work from had poor resolution, and I don’t have enough skill to paint a smaller size. I couldn’t work it out. But a quilt? A quilt?! A chance to marry my novice sewing skills with something meaningful? That’s exactly what got me started quilting in the first place. In the end, I decided that a memorial quilt might not go over so well. Jessica is a special friend, and I know she keeps the memory of her dad alive however she can, but it maybe seemed a bit too personal. Of course, I didn’t make that decision until I had completely designed my version.

If you want to do a Ron Swanson quilt, I definitely recommend following the Happy Zombie’s plan. But if you want to sew your own portrait, here is how I turned my photo into a quilt template:

Select a photo, desaturate (make it grayscale), then divide it into 3 squares wide by 4 squares tall. The photo should be taller than it is wide to avoid distortion.

 

 

Further divide each of of the blocks above into smaller blocks, 10 x 10. I made a 10 x 10 graph in MS Word, then copied and pasted a bigger square from the first 3 x 4 version into the document behind the graph (one by one, creating a separate document for each of the original 12 squares). That way, I could re-use the same 10 x 10 grid for each of the blocks using Save As without having to measure each time. My Word screen looked like this:

Next, make five squares. Fill in one of them with white and the others with different shades of gray from lightest to darkest. I used gray in my design template even though I planned to use varying shades of blue fabric for the actual quilt.

One 10 x 10 block at a time, determine which of the 5 color options (white to dark gray) best matches each square (with the photograph superimposed). I put my scale at the bottom of each Word document, then copied and pasted the best-suited color square on top of the photo. The squares often have a range of grays, including everything from white to black. For these squares, try to determine which of the color options covers the biggest percentage of the square.

I saved each 10 x 10 block as a separate document. Because I couldn’t wait to see the finished product, I copied each 10 x 10 grid into a single Word document, side by side. Here’s what my quilt would have looked like:

And here are is the photo side-by-side with my anticipated result:

 

At this point, you can also start experimenting with the color tone of your quilt. Just use four shades of a particular color, light to dark, in place of the gray. (You can get an idea by using Picture Tools > Color.

Note on sizing: Using 2 1/2″ squares, this will make a 60″ x 80″ quilt. You can make the squares bigger if you want a bigger quilt.