Thursday 13 February 2014

December's techno/sewing effort

At the start of December I started a new block for the Farmer's Wife Quilt. I was still in Ireland and had found a handy tray to tote my hand-sewing paraphenalia around the house. Because it wasn't constantly getting scooped up and moved off the sofa (other people always want to sit where my sewing is - so annoying, damn those people), I suddenly thought I could take a picture every day and be able to see my progress.

Then I wanted to make the photos into a flickbook type video and I took to google to learn how. After struggling through various tutorials for Photoshop (all of which written from Macs for some reason, and I'm a PC girl), my wonderful husband decided to help and did it in 10 minutes in Microsoft Paint - who knew!??

Some disclaimers, this is my first gif, the compression of the pictures has caused some weird artefacts in places, and also Ireland in December means all sorts of funky lighting.

So here it is, if I can figure out how to make this upload and also run - fingers crossed! The block is  #43 Garden Path, has 44 pieces and finishes at 6".


1500 CT Ok, this isn't working right now, but I'll try and troubleshoot it over the next couple of hours as I can :)
1513 CT That didn't take long - woop!!

When I do this little experiment again I will definitely make sure I take the picture at the same time of day each day for constant light, and I'll also get a tripod for the camera so the distance from the block is the same. Still though I'm glad I did it, I love the block and it was fun to experiment with new things (to me).

Now I'll have to learn how to add some music.

We are now in Houston. We're largely unpacked though there are still piles of things in corners and the odd box hanging about. I got my sewing machine out at the start of this week and have begun a little bit of making. In fact, I'm seeing if I can last minute make my mini-quilt for the MQG Riley Blake Basics Challenge.



I might be mad (239 sqaures plus a paper pieced bottom not pictured), but it's nice to not be wrestling cardboard and packing tape each day!

Fingers crossed the mini is made by Sunday night - I'll pop it up here as soon as I finish :)

Have a Happy Valentine's Day - I hope there's some figure skating on tomorrow, so much glitter!!

Oh, and thank you for all the little bits of distraction and pretty I've gotten from your blogs over the last two months - totally sanity saving! x