Silhouettes convey mystery.
Silhouette quilts are an ideal way for needle craft enthusiasts to create special embroidery for quilts and other fabrics. Silhouette pictures emphasize shadow, creating mysterious imagery. The silhouettes you put on the quilt add a sense of drama, intrigue and spark the imagination. Creating a silhouette for a quilt has two major steps: capturing the silhouette photo and adding the image to fabric. To complete this project, it is important that you know a couple of basic features of your camera such as flash and exposure settings.
Instructions
1. Determine what subject you want to photo. The subject is any object you want to create a silhouette of. This can be any object you prefer.
2. Turn the flash off on your camera. Bouncing light from the flash ruins the silhouette by adding to much light.
3. Pick a time of day when the sun is lower in the sky, near the horizon if you are taking photos in the outdoors. Place the light source behind your subject if you are taking photos indoors. In order to capture a silhouette, there must be more light behind the subject than in front.
4. Pick a plain background to frame your subject within. Frame the subject so that it shows distinctly against the background and stands out. Allow each subject a space of it's own and don't allow multiple images to bunch up or appear to close because this causes the silhouettes to blend. For example, if you are capturing a silhouette of two children, don't allow one child to stand in front of another. Have them stand side by side.
5. Put the camera in manual mode so that you can control the shutter speed, or EV: exposure value. Turn the shutter speed up one or two values to let in less light. Take a few pictures to determine if this setting yields the type of results you want for your photo. If not, put the EV values lower and take a few photos and view the results. Take note of the setting you prefer so that you can use it whenever you need to capture silhouettes.
6. Trick your camera to get the right exposure if there is no manual mode by doing the following: Point the camera at the brightest part of your frame and then press the snapshot button halfway down. This activates the camera's automatic exposure settings so that it adjusts to capture the lighter image. Next, point your camera at the true subject of the photo and press the snapshot button fully.
7. Take as many photos as your digital camera can store. Play with different subjects and backgrounds as well as a combination of indoor and outdoor shots. The more photos you take overall, the more good ones you take as well.
8. Print the silhouettes you want to add to your quilt and then cut out the shape. Cut around the edges of your subject, effectively removing the subject from the background. This is the silhouette object you want to appear on your quilt.
9. Iron the heat bond to the underside of the black fabric, according to the manufacturers instructions. This is the side of the fabric that will not show.
10. Place your silhouette image on top of the black fabric and secure it with a pin. Next, carefully cut the silhouette shape in the black fabric.
11. Sew the black fabric to your fabric square. Your silhouette is now ready to add to a quilt.
Tags: black fabric, your camera, your subject, capturing silhouette, exposure settings