Portrait quilts

Every year, thousands of quilters and quilt lovers descend on Houston, Texas for the International Quilt Festival and Quilt Market. This year, Quilt Festival is from November 2-5, 2023. Many attendees’ favorite part of their annual trip is seeing the Festival Judged Show presented by Quilts, Inc.

Check out these picture quilt patterns and projects from the Bluprint community to inspire you to plan your first picture quilt.

In May 2011 my wonderfully creative mother died at the age of 85. Her death was unexpected but not surprising - nonetheless, it still left a void in my sewing spirit. Several trips, alone, driving back and forth between Michigan and New York gave me a lot of time to process and think. When I returned from the funeral, I also returned to my empty sewing studio. The only problem was that I was not ready to be around a lot of people. I wanted to play. I didn't want to work. I put things on hold…

(c) In Quito's Market (Detail) I enjoy getting questions where I have at least some partial answer that might help someone in their journey. Following is a recent question from a fellow portrait quilter having just seen a photo of one of my portrait quilts... From a frustrated quilter: I just saw a photo of your quilt "In Quito's Market". I do figural quilts and I have a question that nobody has been able to answer for me. My problem is that I take a wonderful top, that I have spent hundreds…

You'll find some of the best quilting articles, written by the expert quilters from Fons & Porter, McCalls, and more, here at the Quilting Company!

What is it about the human face and form that we find so fascinating that we want to recreate it in our artwork?

If I haven’t made it clear before, fabric collage is not a particularly fast process. For example, students are not going to finish a collage quilt in a week-long class—unless maybe it’…

My friend Faith Cleary’s new DVD/digital download with Quilting Arts is now out! It’s called “Pet Picture Quilts Made Easy,” and on it, Faith teaches how to take a photo of your pet and recreate it as a piece of art. She shows how to add texture, dimension, and fun backgrounds using fabric, batting and thread. Faith spends time talking about how to choose the right photo, as well as the fabrics and threads that will make your piece look the most realistic. Then she shows how to add the eyes…

Create a portrait pattern from a photo | Terry Aske Art Quilt Studio

I have one week left in my Photoshop for Quilters online class. I thought I would share another PSE technique with you: The point of this lesson was to take an image and edit it so that you could print out a pattern to create an applique quilt. I chose a favorite image of my niece, Lilly: Original Image Image changed to black and white with levels adjustment Image deepened with Hue and Saturation adjustment Image has been posterized Then we were taught to soften the edges of the posterized…