Creating fabric art from a photo

This is something new to me, and really something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but felt it was way out of my wheel house. That is, creating fabric art using one of my photos. I searched online for quite awhile for tutorials. None of them seemed to help. Then I found Nanette Zeller’s online class, “Photo to Applique.” I signed up and I was hooked. But more about her class later.

Here is the photo I wanted to play with. This is the twin arches at Arches National Park.

The first step is to pick out fabric. I thought these would work well. All are my dyed fabrics. The bottom piece I printed over the dyed fabric.

Then you turn your photo into black and white and create your pattern.

Here is the collage and picture before sewing.

Here it is all stitched and ready to be finished.

Here is another photograph from Arches.

The picture and piece before stitching.

Then the stitched piece.

I’m not sure how I will finish them. I thought about making one more piece and putting them together into a large horizontal wall hanging. However, I’m real anxious to try this technique on my iris pictures so I may just ask Dave to frame these two.

Nanette’s class takes you step-by-step, and even includes patterns. I am so excited about this method, and just had to share this with you. Her class can be found here. 

There are other ways to do this, but so far I just love this one. It’s rare that I take a class and immediately create something. Nanette also has a Facebook group where students can share their projects and ask questions.

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It’s fall here, but the iris I planted last October given to me by my new friend Sharon is blooming. I took this picture yesterday. Sharon and Steve will be visiting from Alabama this week so I’m hoping she’ll still be in bloom.

Hope you have a relaxing and creative weekend. As always, thanks for stopping by.