eagle amongst the cherry trees

My BTCT centrepiece is complete and I'm quite pleased with how he's turned out.  

This exuberant eagle has been taken from the cover of Crib Quilts and other Small Wonders by Thomas Woodward & Blanche Greenstein (1981). (Hmm maybe I should have got the iron out.) 

Sweetest little birds perched atop tiny trees, with the mandatory floating pot plant.

Block 20  of BTCT is done too. I actually enjoyed the chainstitch embroidered stems and stayed up ridiculously late last night just to finish them off.

Next up and prepped ready to start today, another deviation... a super dooper Princes Feather from Bill Volckening's glorious Mary Couchman Small (1800-1863) album quilt (with permission, thanks Bill). At the moment it looks like 4 whirling Christmas stockings, but check out the original - if mine is half as gorgeous I'd be happy.
 

Resizing images for quilt patterns

I will often draft a pattern from an image found in a book or on the net, there is such an abundance of inspiring and quirky potential quilt blocks or quilting motifs out there.  I adopted this method in my architectural drafting days.

To resize a photograph or image to the desired size, I photocopy either on my home printer for small jobs or at Officeworks for the bigger ones.  

My re-sizing formula is:       "what you want"        x 100
                                      "what you have"             1

So, for example if you want the resized image to be 45cm and your actual image is 8cm....

                                             45  x 100   = 562.5%

                                             8       1

Therefore, in this example the image needs to be enlarged by 562.5% (or thereabouts).  This works equally well with Imperial measurements. After the image is the correct size the individual components of the pattern can be traced off and/or re-drafted.    

Until next time,
K