Follow along with me as I participate in the 2024 Save Your Story Challenge by Quilt Alliance. You can find all of my blog posts that are part of this challenge.

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After completing the first three Save Your Story Challenges by Quilt Alliance, I was eager to see the topic for the next challenge. That challenge arrived via email on April 13.

This is such a great challenge and I appreciate the nudge to be more thoughtful and intentional about documenting my quilts. I do have a grand plan to take time and photograph all the quilts in each of the collections I’ve generated – the Stitching Hope for the Louisiana Coast and Stories from the South Atlantic Ocean. But that activity is on my list of summer plans. At this moment, I am wrapping up the spring semester with grading final projects and final exams – so photographing multiple quilts in multiple locations will have to wait.

I decided to focus on one quilt, a quilt I am about to give someone as a gift. She is an avid cyclist that I met when I was out to sea for two months in 2022. I have been serving as a mentor to her as she is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Kiel in Germany. Although our official time in the via:mento international program is wrapping up, I know we will continue to be colleagues and friends for quite some time.

Current method of photographing quilts

Whenever I complete a quilt, there are two places where I typically take photographs – hanging on a closet door inside my house, and/or hanging on a rack against the side of my house outdoors. Here is Claire’s quilt inside my home. I made it with fabrics I purchased at Peak to Peak Stitching in Estes Park, Colorado, except for the white stripe in the middle of each square that is a Three Cats Shweshwe textile (purchased in Cape Town, South Africa, where Claire and I departed our ship and went fabric shopping together). The quilt measures 19 inches by 40.5 inches and was completed April 28, 2024. It is the 139th quilt I have completed!

What is wrong with these images? So much! There are incredible shadows in this room, no matter if I use the overhead light or just the natural light. You can see the shadows as I use my cell phone for close-up shots. And having the closet door and doorknob as the backdrop is not attractive at all. So I used this month’s challenge to think outside the box to take some additional photos before bringing this quilt to Claire as a gift (I’m seeing her in Iceland at the end of the month along with the other scientists we sailed with).

New views for a special quilt

As this quilt focuses on cycling, I thought it would be appropriate to have a bicycle in the photos. I’m fortunate to have supportive neighbors that are fans of my quilts and were willing to loan me a bike from one of their kids. Here is what I was able to come up with in my yard and my neighbor’s bike and fence.

Quilt selfies

I have next-to-no photos of myself with my quilts – something I definitely want to improve upon. And I’ve never taken selfies with quilts that I’ve given away. But, I wanted to at least try to follow the spirit of this month’s challenge. As this quilt has odd dimensions (I’m hoping she will either hang this down on a wall, or have it across the back of a sofa or chair), all I could come up with was these poses.

So what have I learned from this month’s challenge? I have a looooong way to go before I’ll be capable of taking any images that I would call artistic or stylish. I think one of my mind blocks is that so many of my quilts relate to the ocean, and the best place to photograph these quilts (I feel) is at the ocean. But this is a great first step this month with a bicycle quilt – and I’m thrilled it is the quilt I’m gifting to Claire!