6/8/14

How to Grow a Sunflower

If I were to give you a frame by frame video of how I spent my weekend, it would look something like this:







It's getting there, but I still have six vertical rows to go. When I'm working on it, I'm working on two rows at a time (Matthew told me they are technically "columns", not "rows". Engineers. Can't live with 'em. Can't live without 'em. Anyway...) Each square finishes at one inch. There are 728 squares total in my project, and I've done 520. You do the math.

So upon seeing this, Mike got the bright idea that any photo could be pixelated in Photoshop to create a map of the colors. I decided to try it with this iris image that I took on Memorial Day.


I tried it at varying scales. It would be an awful lot of little squares. The ones at the edges would be converted to half square triangles.


If you make them too large, then you start to lose the design.


I think possibly a different, less complicated flower might work better. I'm going to continue to work with this. Maybe I'll come up with something.

Matthew and Mike made it home safely. They had a great time together, and they appreciated the food. It's always nice to have a few days to myself, but I'm always ready to have my guys back after a day or two. Quilting and housework only take me so far.

It was a nice weekend here. I hope you had a good weekend too.

11 comments:

Vroomans' Quilts said...

You got a huge headway on your flower. I'm sure Gracie was glad to have her favorite person back home.

Quilting Babcia said...

Housework while the guys are away?! Aww, surely there were quilting projects calling your name instead, LOL! Love that sunflower design! It'll be fun to try some pixelated birds from your birdcam - how about a flicker quilt?

Junebug613 said...

You are booking along on that sunflower! Glad you had an enjoyable weekend and that your guys did too. I look forward to seeing if you figure out how to make your own mosaic pattern.

crazy quilter said...

Wow you really made great progress on this in just a couple of days! You will be done in no time! Glad you had a good weekend!

quiltzyx said...

Wow! Only 6 rows left - that's great progress Barbara! (Rows/columns, WE know what you were talking about!!!)

Many years ago my friend Jim (a graphic artist) talked about my doing a pixilated bed quilt for him. Luckily for me, that's as far as it got!

Nice to hear the guys enjoyed your food & had a good weekend too.

Brown Family said...

Rows, columns...Either way it is beautiful! keep working on creating your own!

Dana Gaffney said...

It looks beautiful, I've seen a website somewhere that does turns a photo into a pattern just like that.Of course, I have no idea now where it is.

Linda M @ Pieceful Kingdom said...

The sunflower is looking great. Craftsy has a free mini class called Pictures to Pixel Quilts. It explains her process of doing this. She uses Excel to do it, and it confused me, but it may make sense to others. I also found a free cross stitch app that will take your photo and turn it into a cross stitch pattern, which basically pixelated it. I have at least one photo I want to make into a pixelated or watercolor quilt.

Anonymous said...

Wow! That's so cool!!! The Iris would definitely be a challenge!

Cath said...

Holy Smokes, Batman! (my best "polite" expletive) you are certainly motoring along with that quilt top!

Kate said...

Your Sunflower is looking great.

You could tell Matthew that they are indeed rows because that is how the quilt is assembled, you sew the pieces together in rows, not columns. It's really just how your orient the strips.