Introduction: Designing Fabric Portaits/quilts Using Photoshop

By dulciquilt.com
About: I am married and retired. Since 1990 my main artform was quilting, but in the past three years I discovered gourd art and that has become my new love. Besides quilting and gourd art, I play mountain dulcimer…

I saw some quilts that looked like photographs and was fascinated with the concept. I did some searching online as well as purchased a book and ended up combining ideas for my own use. I decided to document the steps I used for a small wall hanging so other could see how easy it actually is.
This is the original photo

Step 1: Crop the Photo

I used the cropping tool to get the composition I like.

Step 2: Filter/cutout

Here I clicked on Filter/cutout and this is the first rendition

Step 3: Move the Edges Slider

Moving the edges slider all the way to the left defines the shapes.

Step 4: Move the Levels Slider

moving the levels all the way to the right gives a very stylized picture. this can work, but I still prefer poster edges as shown in following pictures.

Step 5: Filter/poster Edges

This is the first result you get when you click on filter/poster edges

Step 6: Move Edge Slider

Remove the poster edges by moving edge levers all the way to the left.

Step 7: Posterize Level 1

Posterization level 1

Step 8: Poster Level 2

level 2

Step 9: Close-up of Level 4

Here is closeup of level 4. It has too many levels and would be difficult to use as a pattern.

Step 10: Level 3

Level 3 has well defined shapes and colors.

Step 11: Settling on the Look

and this is the one I liked best...level 3.. If you go any higher, you get too much detail. For my wall hanging, I used layers to simplify the background people.

Step 12: View Separation of Colors and Shapes

Here you can see the separation of colors and shapes. print this out and refine shapes by hand to make the actual pattern.

Step 13: The Quilt Portrait

At this point you dig through your fabric stash and try to match the colors as closely as possible. For this project, I used iron on fusible to fuse the pieces to the background, then use a narrow satin/zigzag stitch in matching thread to seal the edges. On other ones, I have used needle turn applique.

This is the finished piece. I'm sorry I don't have photos of the steps I went through picking the fabrics and the assembly process, but I had already finished before I decided to make the tutorial. I hope to add one soon of a horse quilt block I did.

You can check here for the way I assembled a horse applique block: fabric portrait of a horse quilt block:
https://www.instructables.com/id/fabric-portrait-of-a-horse-quilt-block/

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