Quilted Patchworks by Carolyn Forster for Fox Chapel Publishing
Quilted Patchworks by Carolyn Forster
Carolyn Forster is well-known in the quilting community teaching and a trail blazer for new quilting techniques. She first contacted me to create a blog for her when she had just published her first book Quilting On The Go. She has since produced many more books.
These photographs were commissioned by her American publisher Fox Chapel Publishing. In the past Carolyn would take the quilts on her flights to the publishers, for them to shoot in the USA. Due to Covid 19 all has changed of course, which meant the publisher was looking for a photographer closer to Carolyn. I was delighted that Carolyn put my name forward so thank you to Fox Chapel for the commission.
The first day’s shoot was on location not far away in a wonderful garden with stables, horses and even chickens running around. Thank you to the owners Jenny and Mark plus Annabelle for helping with the chickens. Given free rein I shot three different quilts in a series of locations in the garden. I spotted the black barn doors as an ideal location to hang the most dramatic quilt. The over-sized Wendy house was another favourite with the quilt looking wonderfully out of proportion.
The second day’s shoot was for the two much smaller items:
- A stunningly detailed square wallet with a two button tie.
- A clever Japanese-style wrapping cloth which can be tied to contain a treasured item.
I started with the square wallet adding various props supplied by Carolyn, plus a few extra ones. The thimble and round, white, tape measure with the red button was my mother’s. I was inspired by the Japanese vibe so used layers of scrunched up tissue paper. My favourite shots are the extreme close-ups of the button tie, Carolyn’s work is amazing!
The book is about Big Stitch Quilting, hence the more obvious stitches of the wrapping cloth. I think the most successful shots are on the bright magenta tissues.
After the shoot I created a gallery of over 300 images for the publishers to choose from. Contact me if you would like to see the rest of the images.
