Photographing A Quilt - Off the Wall Friday

So more than once, I've been asked why I haven't monetize my blog.  There are basically two reasons.

 One is because  ** Opinion Alert **  there are entirely enough ads in the world.  I don't need to add to this country's addiction to ads.

 The second is because this blog is my way of giving back.  So many times over the years since the internet explosion, I've learned invaluable information from other bloggers and vloggers.
 We've stolen a saying around this house from my brother in law.  "It's not worth knowing if they're isn't a tutorial on it on Youtube"  Funny but so true!

I say all of this because I spent today learning a skill that I read about on a website.  For years, I've wanted to take decent pictures of my quilts.  Although we have a great fiber photographer close by, I just wanted to save the expense and time (mostly time) and do it myself.  But how?? 

Andy Baird and Holly Knott to the rescue.  Their exceptional tutorial on how to photograph a quilt was not only informative but easy enough to follow that I could do it!  I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to take photos of their own quilts for competitions or their website.

I followed the directions  and bought all the items to build my own shooting set up.    Who knew that Lowe's would cut your two by fours for you right there!! Then I spent the afternoon building it and learning how to use my daughters complicated camera.  In the end, I decided that I could follow Andy's instructions with my Canon Point and Shoot.  The adjustments were simple to make to get decent photos.

My first attempts weren't too shabby.  Really the colors are spot on.  BUT as you can see - obviously the tripod was not centered on the quilt.  It LOOKED centered but alas as usual - looks are deceiving.  I'll take new ones tomorrow since I left everything up just in case.

I can tell you that the whole set up cost me about $60 including the wood and hardware, bulbs, light shades, and background.  I used a precut fleece background that was on sale at Joanne's for cheapie.  That is less than one set of pictures from the photographer.  (Not that she charged me too much - just sayin')

So a big Shout out of Thanks to Andy Baird for his great tutorial and to all the other great bloggers who take time to teach the world something.

The Finished Product - no color adjustment - just cropped to see the Edges

I finally took some time off this holiday weekend to catch up on some binding quilts and maybe get some sewing in before its time to start dyeing in June.  Honestly, I think we shouldn't have quilting bees but binding bees!

So What Have Been Up to Creatively?