Fiona Schiffl - II

Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia

Dawn in Venice

Fiona created this beautiful quilt based on a photo her sister took at 5 am on the ferry in Venice of the Rialto Bridge. She modified the photo in Photoshop first, to give it a more watercolour/painted feel. (You can see that modified photo below.)

Here is her story: "At 5am, the dawn's light turned all the buildings (including the bridge) that are white, lovely shades of blue. The seams in the photo aren't as harsh as they appear in real life, nor the colours in the bridge are that green/brown. I'm in the middle of machine quilting the quilt - the photo was taken before basting. It has 3600 pieces in it and is about 37" x 60". The piecing took 8 weeks/7 days a week/7-10 hours a day to do. I put the photo into Adobe Illustrator and drew the pattern on the computer which I found to be the best way to do it and will do it that way from now on. (People without Illustrator could use MS Paint which comes with Microsoft Office.) I also challenged myself not to do a colour chart and work directly off the photo for the colours which also worked really well (although scary at first)."