A few posts ago I discussed creating water from only a few fabrics.  Yes, it is easy to create the feeling of moving water using only three fabrics–a light, medium and dark value.  But when you want to turn up the volume, multiple fabrics make the water more interesting.

I will not show you the whole piece (so many shows now do not want work that has been seen, even on the artist’s blog) but I will show you the water part.  Here, I used multiple fabrics, many unexpected choices for water, and personally I like the results.

The idea here is to create water that looks like it is flowing rapidly.  This was done using a variety of fabrics, but the starting point (as always) was one light, one medium and one dark.  The difference here is the addition of several “zingers” in the mix.  A zinger is a fabric that does not have one specific value because it is made up of several values–like the the blue and white checked fabric.  Just look at the closeup of the fabrics in here:

A lot of these fabrics don’t exactly scream water, but the cacophony of patterns creates movement that I think looks really nice.  I have used this idea in depicting other things besides water:

Like the hair in “The Endless Dance of the Ponytail”

to tree bark…(notice the addition of an african fabric in the mix)

The take-away?  Open up your stash and use all those little scraps you have left to create something wonderful–whether it is texture or just movement, have fun and embrace the process.  The results are great.

In the past several months I have addressed the concept of size in my art quilts.  Although it may not seem that way, the size you decide to work is very significant not for the resulting work, but for the working methods employed in order to get there.

Let’s start by discussing the impact of the overall size.  Large pieces demand attention.  Even from across the room, a large piece has presence and drama.  An artwork that is five feet square will make more of a statement than a grouping of smaller pieces.

There are advantages, however, to working small.  A small piece requires that the viewer move in close and really examine the work.  It becomes more of a personal viewing experience, less dramatic maybe, but there is an opportunity to fit a lot of drama into a little space.

Most of us work somewhere in between very large and very small.  I know for myself, no matter what I tell myself when I get started, I always seem to end up with a piece that is in the 24″ x 30″ range.  Maybe a bit larger or smaller, but really not far from these proportions.  This size must be my comfort zone.  But although many artists would consider this to be small, for me it was just too large.

Why too large?  That is where the technical aspects come into play.  Let’s look at this piece “Dreaming of Brandon”

This piece is in that same size range.  Despite the fact that it is not a huge piece, I did think it had some drama in that the closeup was so tight that there was an immediacy and impact to the piece.  Here is the problem for me:

If you look closely at this detail shot of the arm, you can see where my frustration comes from–the functional stitching that must go on every fabric work layered with batting.  If you work with these materials you know the requirements–any areas that are not secured with functional and/or decorative quilting will eventually look puffed out and may sag.  Therefore, quilt stitching is necessary for an area like this arm which is only about six or seven inches wide.

Although many fabric artists WANT that stitching to add texture to their work, there are areas in my work where I do not want the additional texture or pattern of the necessary stitching.  This was one of them.  This is neither right nor wrong, just the way I ultimately see the finished piece.  So for me, even working 24 x 30 when the piece contained large pieces of fabric became a problem.

So by contrast, here is a piece still on my design wall, almost completed:

Of course, it is hard to compare apples to oranges on a computer screen, without being able to see the actual size of the two pieces.  But this piece is only 12″ square.  That means by the time I secure the edges of each piece of fabric, I do not need to add additional lines of quilt stitching in order to prevent puckering or sagging:

These resulting smaller pieces work for me, because I can use more elaborate stitching where I want it, as opposed to where I need it.  This might not be a problem for others, but it was for me.

Frustrations in your art are an invitation to make changes in the way you work, to evolve and grow.  For now, this change is working for me.  It does restrict my ability to enter shows, as the trends now is for ever larger pieces that fill the gallery space with big impact.  But unfortunately for us as artists, the reality is that we need to do what we do, what we are driven to create, regardless of the trends around us.

I just completed a piece showing water breaking over rocks which will be exhibited in Taiwan next year.  It got me thinking about water, and wanting to share some easy tricks.

Depicting water using fabric may seem difficult, but it only requires a few fabrics.   Usually, only three are needed–a light, medium and dark fabric.  Sound familiar?

Here is a closeup of the water in “Seascape” showing the three fabrics.  The lightest tone is the base, the medium tone shows movement and the darker tone looks like shadows around the base of the rocks.

The pieces are cut into random shapes, the darker pieces go closer to the rocks.  Since the base fabric has some movement, it does not appear to be flat, and therefore doesn’t need much help.

In this piece, called Pinebrook, the water is a single fabric.  Because it is a tie dye look alike with lots of highs and lows already in it, it serves well, especially as a narrow strip through the woods.

The water in this series of beach scenes is done with one base fabric and one darker fabric in strips, stitched closely to add more “texture” to the surface:

Want to know a secret?  The base fabric is actually the back of the fabric used as the accents.  Sometimes, all you need is ONE fabric.

Water is reflective, so often it is necessary to add more fabric to depict what is being reflected:

The more curvy and ripply those lines are, the more they resemble reflections in moving water.

Here four fabrics were used; the blue base,  a darker one (actually if you look closely you can see it is a blue print on white), the green, and the white highlight.  Bits of the flamingo fabric are tucked in to look like reflections, and the same curvy lines from the beak into the water.

Remember that water is usually not blue, it is more likely to be gray, green, or even brown.  Here is a bit of the lake seen through some trees:

Light, medium and dark, the curvier the lines, the more it looks like it is moving.  Simple.

What more complex?  Not necessary, but here goes:

The base fabric here is plain (meaning without a pattern or print) and there are multiple randomly cut pieces that give the water it’s movement.  Not sure you can see it in this picture, but there are lots of unexpected prints in here, all kept from getting out of control by the solid base.

Finally, that new piece.  I won’t show you the whole thing (that waits until it is exhibited) but here is a closeup of the water, inspired by a recent trip to Northern California.  I got lucky, I found a tie dye look alike that already had lots of colors and movement in it and was striated to look like water all on its own:

All I needed were those curly pieces of white fabric to look like the white caps breaking over the rocks.  And the rocks themselves?  A single tie dye look alike had enough going on to look like rock.  Easy.  Try it.

It is not necessary to use a computer program to make your pattern for an art quilt–and there are many art quilters who do not. But I have found that using the filters in Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Photoshop Elements can help to simplify an image into more manageable parts. The cutout filter, in particular, reduces the number of colors visible so that you have more defined areas to cut from fabric. The downside is that in reducing the number of colors, the program often combines pieces you did not want combined, or shifts colors. Learning to play with the program so that you can get the pattern you want takes some practice.

Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Photoshop Elements are wonderful programs with which you can make lots of interesting and exciting changes to your photographs. The adobe (www.adobe.com) website will allow you to download a free 30 day trial so that you can play with and learn the programs. Elements is the less expensive of the programs, and does everything I need the program to do). Trying to explain all the things you could do with these programs could fill a book, so I am only addressing the basic use of Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Photoshop Elements to create a pattern from your photo.

These instructions are written for Adobe Photoshop Elements version 6.0 run on a windows operating system. If you are using a mac, or an older version of either Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Photoshop Elements, the details may vary slightly. However the programs are essentially the same for our purposes. Whichever program or operating system you use, take some time to familiarize yourself with the program and what each individual icon can do.

Step one, opening your picture

• Open Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Photoshop Elements (if using Elements, open in “edit”)
  from the file menu at the top menu bar, go to file–open–(you may see a picture of a file folder next to the word open)
• choose the file on your computer where you have stored your photo, often it is easier to move the photo to the desktop for easy retrieval.
• find the folder in which your photo is located,and then double click on the name of the photo.
• your photo will appear on the screen.

Step Two–making adjustments:

• use the rectangle on the right menu bar to draw a rectangle around an area to crop.  When you have put the rectangle where you want it, go to image–crop and the rest of the photo will disappear.

• from the top menu bar, click enhance and pull down to adjust lighting (most photos are helped by either lightening or darkening and/or increasing the contrast.  Us the slide bar and play with it until you like the way it looks.
• for some programs this will be image–adjust–brightness/contrast
• be sure that the preview box is checked so that you can see the changes you make to the image as you make them.
• when you are happy, click OK and the picture will appear on the screen with your adjustments.

photo of my son Jordan playing the guitar…..

here it is cropped to make a more artistic statement…

Step Three–using filters to create a pattern

• on the top menu bar go to filter–artistic–cutout
• I find that the settings in cutout that work the best are:  max # of levels: 8 (the lower this number is, the more detail you will lose)
• Play with the program and save each possibility so that you can use the one you like the best. (The more you use the program, the more comfortable you will become with knowing instinctively what you want to do with each photo)click ok and the picture will appear on the screen as a cutout. look at it and decide if you like the way it looks.
• if you don’t like the results of your changes, use the undo at the top right of the screen to take yourself back as many steps as necessary (each time you click undo it brings you back one more step until you get back to the beginning). For some versions, a history window allows you to step back to whichever point you want
  Keep playing with it until you are happy with the result.

The cutout filter helps to define where each fabric (and value) begins and ends.  Even if it isn’t perfect, it is just your working pattern.

Other helpful filters to use:

Although the cutout filter is the one that most often gives me a good pattern, there are cases when other filters work better. The filters I find most helpful are:

• artistic–poster edges: this is a good guide for thread painting.
  

• brushstrokes–ink outlines: will outline the edges of elements in the photo.  choose a narrow brushstroke so that you do not lose detail.

poster edges helps define the lines and the edges of the photo…

Notes for advanced users:

Often it is easier to identify an area of the picture to adjust separately if it is blending into another area.  This is done with the lasso tool.

On the left sidebar you will find a variety of tools to use.  Choose the one that looks like a cowboy rope (hence, lasso).

• Move the arrow to the area you want to isolate and left click and hold down the mouse while moving the lasso around the area.  You must close up the lasso line before releasing the mouse.
• Now that a single area is isolated, you can apply any functions you want and it will only be applie in that highlighted area.  It is often helpful to make one ore another area brighter, darker, or increase the contrast so that the filter result is more useful.  This will allow you to apply the filter to certain isolated areas rather than the entire photo.
• Left click on the lasso again and it will disappear.  Now any changes you make will effect the entire photo again.

Remember that you can always use the undo tool or history buttons to go back as far as you need to if you don’t like what you have done.

Step Four–saving your pattern:

When you are happy with the way your pattern looks, uswe the top menu bar again to find file–save a copy.  It is important to use SAVE AS rather than save for two reasons:

1. saving this with a new name (like “at the beach cutout”) allows you to retain the original photo unchanged
2. the default setting for photoshop is a photoshop file, I prefer to use the pull down menu on the save screen (under the file name) to save as a JPEG.

Close the program by clicking the X at the top right corner of the screen.  A box will open that will ask if you want to save the changes to your original photo.  As you have already done a save a copy, and given your pattern an new name, choose NO so that your original remains intact and unchanged.

Now that you have created your pattern and you can save it either on your desktop or in a folder.  At this stage I like to save it to the desktop so it is easily found, and then I can place it in the appropriate folder later on.

Print your full sized pattern using blockposters.com and then have fun making your art quilt!

This is only a fraction of what the program can do–play with it and experiment.  Remember that no matter what you do to the photo, you can close the program and tell it not to save changes, and you will be fine.  The more you play with photoshop, the more you will see opportunities for your art quilts.

Finished piece “Jordan plays the blues”

When choosing fabrics to use for skin tones, the most important factor is value, not color.  Even when the color is not true to life, the facial structure will look right if the values are correct, just as they are in black and white photography.

In this post, I want to talk a little more about value, and how to choose the right fabrics for skin tones.  For the purposes of this discussion, I will limit myself to beige/neutrals that are most true to life.  But the principles are the same regardless of the color range you choose.

The hardest thing about working with true to life “skin tones” is that beige fabrics are not all the same color.  Beige always has an underlying color, like yellow or blue, and these varying beiges do not always work well together, even if the values are correct.  Sometimes it is hard to determine what the underlying color is until you look at two beige fabrics side by side.  That is when you will see that one appears more green, for example, and one looks redder.  It is important to separate your beige fabrics according to their underlying color.

(I am often asked if I purchase my fabrics online, and this is the reason I do not.  The way a fabric looks on the computer screen is always just a little different than the way it looks in person.  Buying the fabric in a store–if you are lucky enough to be close to a quilt shop–means you can evaluate and lay out the fabrics before you buy them and know exactly how they will work together.  Having said that, however, I do purchase lots of beige tones so that when I start a new art quilt, I have lots of options in my stash.  I rarely purchase a fabric specifically for an art quilt.)

These fabrics are neutral, but are much more taupe than beige.  Taupe, by definition is equal parts gray and brown.  They would work for skin tones, but the resulting face will look sickly–which you can use to your advantage if that is what you want to communicate in your art quilt.  But if it isn’t, these are not the colors to use.

Value refers to the relative light and dark of the fabrics you use together.  This does not mean a fabric that is lightest in one assortment will be lightest in every assortment, value means where each fabric sits in relation to the others in the group.  Sometimes it is easy to see by the naked eye, often it requires the use of a red viewer, like a ruby beholder.

The ruby beholder is a piece of red plastic (you can also use a piece of red acetate from an art supply store) which is held about six inches from your eyes, and through which you view your fabrics.  Like a black and white photo, the color is eliminated and all you see are the values as they relate to each other.

Take this group of fabrics–to the naked eye they all look different, but squint when looking at the screen and you will see what the ruby beholder would also show you–they are all the same value.

When viewed through the red viewer, this is more obvious.  That would mean no matter how carefully you identify the light and dark areas on your face, no matter how skillfully you cut the pieces, as soon as you step back a few feet all the fabrics will blend together and look like one fabric.  What a waste of time and effort.

(Keep in mind that the red viewer is easier to look through than it is to photograph through.)   Here is a range of fabrics from light to dark:

and this is what they will look like through the red viewer:

Whenever I start looking at fabrics, I begin with just two and decide (either with out without the viewer), which is lighter and which is darker.  Then I take a third, look at it in relation to these two and decide if it is lighter, darker or the same as what I have laid out.  If it is the same as one of the fabrics, I make a decision about which I like best and eliminate the other.  If it is lighter or darker, I place it where it fits in the range.  I continue this way until I have MORE than I think I will need.  It is much easier to eliminate a fabric or two once you begin determining placement in your art quilt.  Having to find another fabric that fits right in between two values is really tough.

The fabric placed horizontally over the others is the one I am looking at.  Is it the same as anything here, and if not, where does it fit in?

Looking through the red viewer (and trust me that it is more obvious when you actually do this) it looks like the same value as the fifth fabric from the left.  So I would decide if I liked it better than what was already there.  When I look at it again with the naked eye, I decide that maybe I like the one that is already in the assortment better, so this one goes back in the stash.

This may seem like a laborious task, but if the fabric values aren’t right, the piece won’t be either.  Even going slowly and carefully, there are still fabrics that don’t look right when the piece starts to evolve and may be changed down the line.  But a good solid start gets you closer than you would if you jump in.

Many art quilters work from their head–and I am in awe of that ability.  For me, it is not enough to see it in my head, I need more help in getting it to fabric.

This is the reason I work from a photo.  Using a photo as a guide, all the information I need is already there for me.  There is no need to reinvent the proportions, the perspective, or the light and shadows.   For me, this saves a lot of time and avoids a lot of frustration, time I can spend focusing on choosing fabric and building the elements.

Often viewers comment on my work that it looks so lifelike, that the body language is so effective that they can feel the life in the figures.  This is no accident, working from the photo gives me the tools.

Here is a photo I used for two of the figures I made for sightlines.

I acutally used the same photo for another set of figures, more on that in a minute.  I loved this elderly couple with their shopping bags and laundry.  One aspect of this photo that (I feel) would have been difficult to create without the photo is the sense of movement.  We can see that she is walking; he is leaning to one side which also gives a sense of movement.  Could I achieve this alone?  Probably.  Is it easier to simply work from the photo?  Absolutely.

Here, the couple as been isolated from the rest of the photo, making it easier to work with.  If you are comfortable with either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, it is not difficult to isolate an area and remove others.  But it is not crucial.

Here they are translated into fabric.  The choice of fabric is the most important part of this transition–often the colors I choose are similar to the original, often they are not.  Although I do maintain the values in the original photo, I choose color based on what else is going on in the piece.  His blue shirt worked well; her white shirt and cap were not interesting enough, so they were changed.  Highlights and shadows did not have to be invented, simply transferred from photo to fabric.

Remember the other two figures in the original photo?  Here they are isolated from the rest of the photo:

I love the highlights and shadows in both the man’s shirt and pants, but also in the woman walking away.  Using the photo these are easily translated by choosing fabrics by value, despite the color:

Here the two figures are completed and ready to add to the larger work.  You can see the values used relate to the light and shadow areas, and convey that information to the viewer.  Body language is also translated by the subtle positioning that was guided by the photo.

Making changes to the photo or combining elements from different photos can completely change the context, and therefore the final piece.  These two photos were taken at different times, in different places:

This sun-worshipper…

And this man looking at his phone in the park.

Combined, they tell a completely different story.  Here they are a couple sitting in silence, back to back.  Removing his phone, he now is simply looking into his empty hands–changing the tone of the photo.  I often combine elements from different photos in order to tell the story I want to tell.  Two crucial things to keep in mind are:

1. The scale of the different elements must be the same (this can be changed in photoshop)
2. The light source must be the same (often achieved by flipping one element so that the light source is on the same side as the other).  If the light sources cannot be reconciled, then light and shadow have to be “figured out” or a different element must be chosen instead.

Keeping a large, well-organized file of photos, I always have the right thing to add to a work in progress.

Almost immediately after posting the day before yesterday I got a comment asking me to discuss light and shadow–so that will be today and tomorrow.

The real work in depicting light and shadow comes before you start choosing and assigning fabric, it begins when you take your photo.

Here is the original photo of the man from the last post.  I have cropped to just show his shirt as that is the example I will use for this discussion.  As you can see, the light was coming from the left and that created a highlight on his shoulder and shadows in the folds of his shirt.  It is difficult (for me, at least) to start with a line drawing and try to figure out where the fabric of the shirt would drape, and where those folds would be in shadow and where they would reflect the light.

By contrast, here is a photo taken with a flash (the faces have been cropped out to protect people’s privacy)

You can see that with a camera flash, there is a bright light straight on, leaving only a few shadows towards the bottom of the shirt and in the sleeves.  This would be far less interesting done in fabric, as the whole shirt would be the same value.

When I take a photo, if I can control the situation at all, I try to take pictures that have a strong side light so that there are highlights and shadows in it.  This means shooting without a flash, which often results in a dark photo with focus that might not be as sharp as it would with the additional light from the camera flash.  No matter, super sharp focus is of less importance to me than those nice lights and shadows.

Once I have chosen my photo, I find that simplifying it in Photoshop helps define those light and dark areas.

Here is the photo side by side with the “cutout filter” from Photoshop.  The cutout filter takes the many colors in a photograph and limits them to just a few, creating a simplified map of the basic shapes.  You can choose up to 8 “levels” (meaning 8 colors) which is what I use.  You can see on the cutout on the right that the light and shadow has been exaggerated and will be easier to follow than the original photo–but if you don’t have a computer or are not comfortable using it, you don’t need to do this step.  You can also print or xerox your photo and bring up the contrast, which will have a similar effect.

This is the critical stage, finding or taking a photo that already contains the information you need to create light and shadow, whether it is on a figure, a building, or a tree–whatever.  THAT is why I choose to work from photographs.

Tomorrow, I will recreate that shirt for you so that you can see step by step how I translate this information into fabric.

This art quilt of my son Jordan playing the guitar is one of my favorite examples of beautiful side light–you can really see the light source, especially in the shirt.

Continuing along as described in the last post, I have completed this figure and she is now ready to be added to the whole art quilt.  Working one small element at a time, I have put them all together and placed the tracing template over the pieces so that I can nudge everything into place:

When I am satisfied that all the little pieces (or glued elements) are in the right place, I remove the tracing template and glue everything together–using as little glue as possible.

Here is the completed figure.  She looks complex, but breaking it down into managable pieces, the figure was not any harder to complete than a simpler element with fewer pieces:

Look at her sneakers–these were fussy cut from a fabric with color changes and swirls.  By thinking about shadow and light (and seeing it on the pattern from the original photo) I placed the freezer paper tracing so that the lighter areas would be in the right place, and so that the swirls would follow the shape of what I was cutting, giving the sneakers more of a sense of roundness.

This was also done in the sweatshirt tied around her waist–the fabric was chosen because the pattern on it allowed me to fussy cut the piece to look like the shadows in the part hanging behind her back–saving me the trouble of placing those microscopic pieces.

Students often tell me that they are intimidated by figures or other elements in their art quilts that seem complex or complicated.  In this post, I will show you how to break them down so that they are not so scary.

This figure is going to be part of a much larger work containing many figures.  But I don’t look at the big picture, I begin with one figure and even then I break it down to individual elements.

As with all my work, this figure started with a photo.  I often take the photo into Photoshop (or photoshop elements) and use the cutout filter to make the photo easier to follow in pieces of fabric.  It has been my experience that although this often helps, it can also cause pieces to blend together, which is not favorable.  In this case, I used the lasso tool to select small segments to which I apply the cut out, and leave others as the original photo.  But more on Photoshop another day.  I print the “pattern” in the exact size I want the finished figure in my art quilt.

So this becomes my working pattern.  See how the legs, arms, jean and shirt have the cutout applied, but the sneakers, for example, do not.  This is something that will be guided by your own experience.  I always like to start with a photo because I have all the information I need; value, proportion, perspective and shadow.  I do not always follow the colors exactly.

I now do a tracing onto freezer paper–in this case for your benefit I have done the whole figure.  Usually I work on one small element at a time; for example, just the arm, or just the legs, just the jeans–you get the idea.  This makes things very simple.

Here you can see the entire tracing.  Ordinarily, I would have started with just the skin tones, which means I would have traced the head, legs and the one arm.  Then, using the pattern and my red viewer, I identify the value changes and number them.  See on the legs, for example, the skin tone numbers.  I pull out my beige stash, find the fabrics I want to use and put them in number order from 1 to 5.  I compare the value of the chosen fabrics to the places they appear in the pattern with the viewer to be sure that they corrospond.

Beginning with the largest piece of the arm, for example, I cut the whole arm from the #3 fabric.  Then I cut the #2 and layer it on top, then the #1, etc. until the arm is complete.  When I am sure I like the way this element looks, I glue the pieces together.  If I am not sure, I wait until more of it is done.

In this way,  I build each individual element and pin them to my foundation.  This is a small figure, so I will work the whole thing on my work table.  If she were larger, I would take each completed element and add them to the piece on the design wall.

I do a rough tracing (just the main elements, not every detail) on tracing paper.  This I can lay over the work as I progress to make sure every element is in the right place.

you can see how she is coming along, but it is clear that her bottom half and her top half don’t line up properly.  When I lay the tracing over this I can adjust and then pin everything in its proper place while I continue.

more to come

Today I have the awesome task of putting rod pockets on a dozen or so of my newer quilts.  Why am I in this predicament?  Because the rod pocket is my least favorite part of making an art quilt and by the time I get to this point, I am itching to start something new.  So every once in a while I find myself having to spend an entire day doing nothing else.  Poor time management, maybe.

For those of you who are already comfortable with putting rod pockets onto the backs of quilts, go find something else to read.  For those of you who could use the tutorial, here it is.  Please forgive some of the photos being a little out of focus–spending the day on such a menial task makes my BRAIN a little out of focus.

Step #1 is to produce the labels.  I use computer printable fabric sheets and create a page at a time on the computer (ok, so that is one good reason to wait until I have a few to do at once).  I created a label I liked and saved the format on the computer so that all my labels are the same size, same font, same font size–you get the idea.  I print out the page and cut them apart with pinking shears, that way I don’t have to turn any edges under.  One thing I always do is to print a very faint gray line inside the label–this is my cutting and stitching guideline–no guessing and straight every time.

Step #2 cutting out the rod pocket.  I save all the scraps that are big enough for this purpose from the same fabric I use for the backs of all my quilts–off white kona cotton.  Most shows require a 4″ finished rod pocket so despite the fact that I think it is too wide, I do all of them this size.  I start with a strip of fabric 8 1/2″ wide–the easiest way to do this is to use two rotary rulers.  My standard ruler is 6 1/2″, so I butt one 6 1/2 ruler touching 2″ of another ruler and VOILA! 8 1/2 inches.  And I only had a do a little math.

Step #3 decide how wide the rod pocket needs to be.  Again, I don’t measure, I eyeball it, leaving a few inches on either side of the quilt back:

Step #4 sewing the label onto the rod pocket.  I want to do everything I can by machine, so the label gets put onto the rod pocket first.  Fold the piece that will be the rod pocket in from both sides so that they meet in the middle

This is the back of your rod pocket, flip it over and place the label where you want it and pin in place

Take it to the sewing machine and use those little gray lines as the guide to sewing this onto the rod pocket (be sure to unfold it so you are only sewing through one layer of fabric)

(ah, finally a photo in focus!)

Step #5, using an iron, press in on each end of the rod pocket about 1/4″ (I don’t measure, I approximate) then fold it over again and press.  This will give you a finished clean edge on both sides–take to the sewing machine and do a single line of stitching to hold each folded edge in place

Step #6 With the right sides OUT, turn the long edges together and stitch closed

Step #6, move that seam to the center back and press the rod pocket

Step #7 Pinning the rod pocket in place.  I don’t measure, or do math–remember?  I fold the rod pocket in half and put a pin in the fold–the midpoint.

Then I do the same thing with the quilt back–fold the quilt edge to edge and mark the center top with a pin (get where I am going?)

Line up the pins and you know the rod pocket is centered.  Ta-dah, another math-phobic moment!

Pin into place and on to the final step, hand sewing.

Step #8 Handsewing the rod pocket.  Unless your seams on the quilt top line up perfectly with the edges of the rod pocket (don’t laugh, I used to do this to avoid the handsewing) you will have to sew the rod pocket edges on my hand.  Most books will tell you to use a slash stitch, but I think an applique stitch looks cleaner.  Choose a thread that matches the rod pocket and begin by bringing your needle up right in the fold of the edge of the rod pocket

Pull the thread through.  Now put the needle into the back right next to the place where it came out of the fold, so that you are leaving the tiniest little bite of thread showing

(It is hard to tell what you are looking at here, the edge of the fold, the thread coming through the frame and the needle going into the back as close as possible to the rod pocket folded edge.)  Turn your needle in the direction you are sewing and go through somewhere in the batting–be careful not to pull that through to the front.  (been there, done that)

Travel about 1/4″ and pull up in the fold again.  Between those lines of quilt stitching you can see the little dot of a stitch that we just did.

Here is a closeup showing the top of the rod pocket handsewn onto the quilt back.  Looks nice and neat, right?  (You should see the room I sew in!  Not so nice and neat).  Now that I have shown you, I am off to handsew all my rod pockets–maybe there is a good movie on TV…..