The Big Picture

Thanks to a talented friend who has taken up photography in a big way, I have a picture of my big quilt.  The quilt is about 104" x 104" so it is no small matter to hang it up.  Marcie was willing to disarrange her entire living room, push heavy furniture around, enlist her busy husband, climb up on a stepladder, set up camera and tripod, and then tinker for quite some time with settings to achieve the most accurate color and sharpest image.  She also photoshopped the images to remove the large clamps we used to hold the quilt on a large drapery rod up near the 9' ceiling.  Not for the faint of heart. 

This large quilt was 'inspired by' a small applique quilt called 'Calico Garden,' made by one Florence Peto and now in a museum.  Some of our 'bee' (called the Calico Gardeners) reproduced the quilt fairly faithfully, but I went a bit further.  (Something like, "Hey, why not bite off more than I can chew?")  I used elements of the original 3" blocks, but enlarged and multiplied the motifs.  Ultimately, I went completely off on a tangent and added birds, plums, blue daisies, and other things that are found nowhere in the 'original.'  This quilt top took about 18 months to complete; I sent it out to be hand-quilted (so it would be finished in my lifetime).  I've photographed it before (on our bed) but this is the first time I've been able to see it so fully.