Neck Tie Quilt

Daughter I-Needa decided to send me this picture of the full quilt. This is the quilt Mother made a number of years ago. She searched every garage sale and gathered a sack or two of men's neckties. Then she made all these little squares and sewed them together for a quilt. She said it was really hard as all the ties are cut on the bias and you have to work with that when sewing them together.


She also made shams for the pillows, and sawtooth edging in white. It is a happy looking quilt.

You can click on the photo and get an even closer look at the quilt. Of course, you knew that.

Tea Towel Time

I-Needa was at Mrs. Paints Beautifully's house the other day as they were painting on tea towels. My! This brings back memories.

I'm afraid my towels are now purchased complete with decorations, but I do remember the time when fussing up plain white cloths to use around the kitchen was the 'in thing' to do. You may... or may not... remember all the towels embroidered with names of the days of the week. There were pictures of washing for Monday, ironing for Tuesday, etc. I have no idea where they have gone.

I-Needa said that there is more she is going to paint on her towel, she just didn't have time.

For you quilters, this quilt used as a bedspread was one my mother made years ago. It is all from men's neckties. She said it was a dickens to make as ties are all cut on the bias, which made working with them lots of fun... in a challenge sort of way. The fabrics give a rich look to the quilt, and she received many complements on it as it sat on her antique walnut bed. I-Needa was blessed with it a few years ago.

Just in case you wonder what I'm doing, I'll confess that I'm doing a little of this and that. I have been working with scanning photos, and I'm also trying to clean the guest bedroom closet. I don't think the two are related.

Gift For I-Needa

I wish I could paint like this!!!

I-Needa has a neighbor who has quite an artistic talent. I had the privilege of getting a tour of her home with all the nifty things she has created.

Mrs. Paints Beautifully has taken several of the neighbors under her wings and is helping them learn to paint. I'm sure something like this takes a bit of practice!
School is about to start, and Mrs. Paints Beautifully surprised I-Needa with this lovely little writing desk box all decked out in back to school art.

The top picture is the outside lid of the box. The inside is shown in the bottom picture. I-Needa was thrilled at the lovely surprise, and she will certainly enjoy this painted box.

If you are a quilt person looking at this picture, you might enjoy knowing that the quilt is one my mother made several years ago. It is a very happy quilt.

Think

I-Needa sent me a picture of the letters she painted yesterday which will hang in her elementary classroom. The inspiration came from her high school years seeing a sign with black lettering hanging above the board in her algebra teacher's room. I-Needa reported that the whole class hated that sign.

Now, as a teacher, I-Needa has more of an appreciation for the reasoning behind that sign. She decided the other day to use it in her classroom.

She purchased the letters on 'big time' sale at Michael's and painted them with acrylic paint. The letters are lightweight wood. They are a good size, but not large. Placed on this white place mat, you can have an idea of size. I-Needa used a stylus to place the dots on the letters. I think they are really happy looking and hope her kids will appreciate them and the meaning behind them.

Taking the Red Out

I've torn myself away from playing with layers, and I've started trying to recover some of the old photos. The top photo is one taken of Right Back many many years ago. His grandmother had this photo in an album that wasn't photo safe. There may have been other factors as well that caused the picture to take on a reddish cast. I will admit that the house was a pale pink, but not that pink.



I'd scanned this top photo some time ago with my HP all-in-one. I think it did a pretty good job of scanning, but there wasn't any way for me to really fix the color problem.


I retrieved the original photo from its resting place and scanned it again with the Epson photo scanner.

I clicked on customize when the window popped up, and I clicked for it to adjust color.

I then opened it in Photo Shop Elements and did another automatic color adjustment.

I'm thinking that the second photo would be far nicer in an album, and I feel I have that precious moment back again.

I'm seeing all kinds of possibilities here!

Playing With Photo Shop Elements

I've certainly strayed from card making lately, but I just may have found what I want to do when I grow up. I want to play with graphics!!! Oh, wait! I am grown up, and I am playing with this new toy. I just LOVE learning new things.

Last night I decided that I'd best get into the tutorials that come in Adobe Photo Shop Elements. It certainly beats trying to figure everything out by myself.

I've always wondered how people took photographs and changed their content moving things from one picture to another. After the tutorial.... I knew! It is about making layers.

This photograph was taken in I-Needa's yard close to her front door. I opened that in Photo Shop Elements and used it as a background layer. Not long ago, I-Needa decided to take up painting. Her first project was a mushroom. Her second was this frog. She had sent me photos of each of these items separately.

I opened the mushroom (brought it into Elements) and pulled it on top of the yard photo. Then I erased the background from the mushroom picture with a background eraser. I then had the mushroom showing in her yard. I used a move tool to position the mushroom, and a sizing tool to get it the size I wanted.

I then opened the frog picture into Elements and pulled it on top of the yard photo. Then I erased the background with a little background eraser. Again, using the move and sizing tools, I worked until I was satisfied with the look. Then I used a flatten image command followed by saving the photo.

No! I am not ready yet to take pictures and try to teach Photo Shop Elements. I'm a very very beginner. I have to tell you.... this is fun... way fun... totally cool... I see new things on the horizon.

Working With Photos

Today I purchased and set up this new photo scanner which I purchased from Staples. It is an Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner. It came with scanner software bundled with Adobe Photo Shop Elements.

Why, oh why, am I getting involved with this? It is something that seems to be growing bigger by the day. It started as a simple desire to copy and repair some of the old family photos so that they could be preserved in either a book or scrapbook form.

I quickly found out that my regular all-in-one HP printer/scanner/copier just wasn't up to the task. Don't get me wrong... I use the dickens out of that piece of equipment. I just found that a dedicated photo scanner would produce a higher quality and do more for the photos.

I'm now at square one learning how to use Adobe Photo Shop Elements. I've messed around before with 'Paint', but this is a much bigger program, and it is going to take some doing on my part to develop some self taught skills.

While I may be a tad in awe of this whole undertaking that I've managed to commit myself to doing, I do think it will be fun. I'm going to be using lots of problem solving skills and exercising my brain but good!

I've spent a good portion of the afternoon just messing around with Photo Shop and reading what I can in the instruction portion of the software. I long for the good old days of a nice written manual that you can hold in your hands and take with you to study. Somehow, I just don't want to run off the fifty some pages on my printer.

I'm going to have to do some serious organizing in my head about how to scan and organize the pictures in the computer so I can find them easily. There will be a lot of pictures.

I've about had it for today, so will try to clear the cobwebs out of my brain and come back for another round tomorrow.