I spent the afternoon photographing the quilt my mother made. The “canvas” is more than 9 feet tall and it took several years to complete so I figured I had better do a good job photographing it. Once the quilt was on the wall, I took a few light readings and color temperatures and did some balancing. The the photo shoot started. I took a few overall photos and again checked for the color temperature. Then I took a set of reference shots and bracketed for good measure.

Since my primary camera was digital, I also took three sets of images which I would later reassemble. The largest of these sets was 41 fames and when finished, gave me an image 7128 x 8320. The individual images were photographed at F2.8 and 1/90sec using ISO100 using a 300mm lens. I probably should have used F32 or better, added a gradient filter, and used a long exposure but I didn’t realize some of the issues I would encounter in the post production.

While the photographs are good, they do not convey adequately convey the size, color, or quality of the quilt. I’ll continue to work the composite image to color match it to the actual quilt. At some point, I will do a full inspection for image aberrations and if I don’t find any, I will track down a customer photo lab that can handle a large print.

Here are a few images from a quilt my mom is making for me. I’m blown away by the quit – it is absolutely beautiful. I had no idea it was going to look like this. I first saw the fabric a few years ago as a Christmas gift. The colors were great and the little picture that came with the card looked nice but I had not reference of size. Over the years, I’ve see a square here and there but I never saw anything in context. The quilt, to me was just colors.

My mom has been on a marathon this past year to finish the quilt and a few weeks ago the top was finished and the back was ready so she sat down with a person who does machine quilting and they planned out the assembly. Here is a montage of the quilt … the only work left is the border, which is not a small task given the size of the project but given how close the quilt is to “finished” there is more than enough inspiration.

Mom – Thanks and I love you !