As I mentioned on Facebook, I just sent away two photos taken this past Feb. in Hawaii to www.spoonflower.com. Spoonflower is a site that prints on fabric. In this case, the photos will be printed on a cotton/silk fabric that has a slight sheen, which will be perfect because both digital photos are beach scenes. Their prices are incredibly reasonable, especially when you compare printing on your home printers - you need to keep in mind when you print yourself, you have to pay for the computer ready fabric and the ink cartridges.
I have printed landscape scene before on computer ready fabric, as demonstrated below, using a method called "tiling" or "posterizing." Basically, what you are doing is taking a digital image and enlarging it so it prints on several fabric sheets. What you end up with is: a scene that you must put together - It involves trying to eliminate the white border around each portion of the scene (one printer sheet). Many quilters just line the pages up and end up with straight lines through their scene. I prefer another method. I cut every other line in a curvy fashion then lay that line on top of the coordinating straight line. In my method, the scene blends together and you see no joining lines. As an example, I am including a photo of my quilt, Clover Lake, where I used this method. The only part of the scene where I didn't use this method was the sky. Instead, I substituted an actual commercial sky print because I thought the joining lines would be too obvious. I accomplished this by cutting "out" the mountain and trees and then sliding the sky fabric beneath. I glued the curvy lines and sky into place using a glue stick and 505 Re positionable adhesive. In Clover Lake, I also added some of my own pine trees, rocks and moss along the shoreline of the design, as well as overlays of Angelina and extensive machine quilting.
Another quilt where I used the tiling or posterizing method is my quilt Serenity. This quilt was auctioned benefiting the Association of Pacific West Quilters. I wish I had bid on it myself as I truly love this quilt! In this quilt, I used one of Mickey Lawler's SkyDye hand -painted skies. The only problem was: I didn't have quite enough fabric. So, here's what I did; I laid a portion of the fabric on the top of my printer and then copied and printed the fabric on computer ready fabric. To join the fabrics, I cut my trusty curvy line and you can't even see where I joined it. See, there's always a way to solve a problem......I enhanced my design with Neocolor wax pastels, machine embroidery, and overlays of Angelina. Man, I miss this quilt......
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