The Digital Quilt, Photography, Printing, and Stitching

This class is closed.  Waitlist only available.

5 days - All levels

Learn the secrets of turning your images into fabric and creating dynamic art quilts.
Professional photographer Kerby Smith will give you tips on how to get the most out of your digital camera, then you will put those techniques into action in the field. Returning to the classroom you will learn to download, manipulate and print your pictures onto fabric. If you don’t have a digital camera, you will learn how to scan and print images onto fabric. Quilt artist Lura Schwarz Smith will teach a variety of composition, construction inking and painting techniques to combine your digital fabrics with other fabrics to create exciting art quilt compositions. Students may focus more on the photography and computer work or toward the inking and quilt construction. Both tracks will be available for the entire time.  As a bonus, Kerby will share techniques for photographing your quilts.

Please follow the link below to take a survey to assess your computer skills before enrolling in this class.

http://www.thedigitalquilt.com/beforeClass.html

Taught by:  Lura Schwarz Smith

                     Kerby Smith

Supply List

Part One – Getting your Images onto Fabric ( led by Kerby)

Entry Level No Camera -  little or no interest in Photography, just wants to get images on fabric to cut up and use in art quilts.

• 12 or more photographs or art work(sketches, watercolors, pastels etc.) that are each at least 4 x 6 inches but not larger than 8.5 x 11 inches in size to be scanned. We recommend that you have a common theme to be used in the art quilt top you will work on in part two of the class.
•  Optional: laptop computer(MAC or PC) USB2 port, AC Power Supply and plenty of room on your hard disc and Adobe Photoshop Elements software. Note: at this level the laptop computer is optional but to get the most out of the class and to be able to repeat what you learned in class at home we highly recommend that you bring your own laptop.

Entry Level Digital Camera has a digital camera and wants to know how to get pictures from it onto fabric.

• Digital camera: owner’s Instruction Manual, extra memory cards, power supply for recharging camera’s batteries and cables for down loading images to your computer.
• Laptop computer (MAC or PC) USB2 port, AC Power Supply and plenty of room on your hard disc and Adobe Photoshop Elements software.
• Any of your digital images that you have stored on your computer that you want to work with in class.

Intermediate to Advanced already has a working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop Elements or the Adobe Photoshop CS2 and wants to improve skills both with their digital camera and Photoshop and to learn a workflow for printing on fabric.

• Digital camera: owner’s Instruction Manual, extra memory cards, power supply for recharging camera’s batteries and cables for down loading images to your computer. If you are using an advanced digital camera bring interchangeable lenses from wide angle to medium telephoto.
• Laptop computer (MAC or PC) ) USB2 port, AC Power Supply and plenty of room on your hard disc or a portable external hard drive such as a WD Passport .
• Software: Adobe Photoshop Elements latest version of Adobe Photoshop CS, CS2 or CS3 software for processing your camera rea files if you are using something besides Adobe Camera Raw.
• Any of your digital images that you have stored on your computer that you want to work with in class.
• Grey card 18% Grey for color balancing raw files.

Please follow the link below to take a survey to assess your computer skills before enrolling in this class.

http://www.thedigitalquilt.com/beforeClass.html

Part Two

We will be working with the fabric sheets you printed from your own photographs in Part One. We will also be learning inking and shading techniques that you can use to enhance and change these digital prints. The exercises begin on paper and moves to fabric.

• Photo of a face, if your project does not feature a close-up of one.
• 8 x 11 photocopies ( black and white are fine) of photos, if originals are smaller. Our exercises in shading work best  with a face at least 3-4 inches high, so photocopies or digital prints of that size are for enlarging purposes if needed. Bring originals for reference.

• Paper or sketchbook and pencil
• Basic sewing and sewing machine kit
• Mat, rotary cutter and ruler
• Paper scissors and fabric scissors
• Fusible, if desired for Applique work in project
• Optional:
• Colored pencils- Prismacolor pencils are best and also work on fabrics. ( I  bring supplies to share)
• Tsukineko inks ( I bring a set to share)
• Textile paints ( I bring a set to share)

Fabric

• At least 5 non-precious fabrics for the free-form piecing exercises, approximately  ½ yard of each. Bring other fabrics in a wide range of value (dark to light) in colors and textures which will suit the project you plan to work with. Variety is the goal, scraps are fine. Finished top toe wall size, so richness of choice in small amounts is best.

Kit Fee $60  Includes printable fabric sheets, muslin sheets, set of oil pastel fabric crayons, use of our laptop computers, digital printers, digital inks, scanners, Tsukineko inks, textile paints and more.