Designing in Photoshop

I love the Storm At Sea quilt block, and have wanted to do a study in color using it for a while. So I started playing a few nights ago.

I took out the side and bottom border of the block in order to connect consecutive blocks to each other better, and drew the whole thing in Photoshop. Then I took a picture of a gradation of colored batiks that I bought at Paducah last weekend and grabbed the color of each fabric with the dropper tool, adding them to my Swatch Palette.

Then I filled the sections of my drawing in a duplicated layer (so I can turn this layer off and color it in another time without losing my work), and came up with this:

It was a tremendous amount of fun. I’m already seeing sections of that coloring page that I want to tweak, but I think I may run with this (after I verify that I do indeed have enough of these fabrics to make it happen. Helen will need a new bedquilt in order to prevent her first one from dying an early death, and she’s currently obsessed with Ariel and “The Little Mermaid.” So if I can create a watery-looking quilt for her, she’ll be thrilled to pieces. I’m also making a Mermaid Wall Hanging for her (I’ve modified the pattern to give the mermaid a purple bra like Ariel), that hopefully I’ll have in a presentable form in time for Helen’s birthday next month. The quilt will come later.

I’m quite excited that I could build it so easily in Photoshop…. And I learned a lot about Photoshop in the process, as usual. Every time I do something in PS, I learn a lot. And I like that I’m getting to use the same software for so many different things!! It’s awesomely versatile.