I often need to photograph my quilts for entering contests, but I’ve also made a habit of taking pics of every quilt I make to have a record of them. Taking photos of a quilt can be tricky, especially if it’s bed sized. If it’s not for competition, I’ll photograph large quilts on the bed. Otherwise I like to take them outside because natural light is best.
I did a blog topic about my technique for doing this way back in 2010. You can read it by clicking here!
Recently I discovered an even easier way to photograph small quilts outside. It’s a bit edgy, and I’m not taking responsibility if it doesn’t work as well for you, but I was amazed at how easy this crazy idea worked for me.
My quilt is 30″ x 40″ and, instead of moving my large design wall outside, I “pinned” the quilt to a window screen:
I closed the window/door behind the screen, pushed the pin through the quilt just inside the binding at a downward angle, and through a single hole in the screen. My long quilting pin actually touched the window behind and this kept it in place.
I placed many pins along the upper edge, supporting the quilt as I went so no undue pressure was placed on any of the screen holes.
It worked great, and was quite simple to do!
And the screen came through just fine.
This quilt is my latest endeavor ~ and it’s modular! Next week I’ll tell it’s story :-).
Ellen Simon says
What kind of camera did you use? I have a simple digital point and shoot camera.
clkquilt says
I used a simple point and shoot digital camera back at the time of my 2010 post, but now I’m using my phone. Isn’t it amazing the quality of pictures we can get with our phones?
Judy says
Hi Chris – I have 2 plant hooks about 4 feet apart under the eaves of my house and I have an old curtain rod that is a heavy metal and I just lay the rod through the hooks. Slide the quilt on and it works great!. Of course you need to have a hanging sleeve on the quilt.
Ellen says
This sounds like my “design wall”, which is a queen size flat flannel sheet pinned to the vertical strings of a large Venetian window blind using my curved safety pins. It blocks the light a little for the few days it’s up, but I get a better view of the quilt layout than laying it on the floor then standing on a chair to get a distance view. ?