One question I get fairly often is how I photograph my quilt pattern cover quilts — especially the flat lay cover images where the quilt looks almost perfectly square and straight, and no fingers are peeking over the corners. So I thought it could be fun to show you how I do it!
For my actual cover quilts, I always finish the quilt completely first — binding and all. I also prefer to photograph them for the cover before washing them, while they are still as flat and crisp as possible.
The ideal photo day is:
- Overcast weather
- Very little wind
- No snow or rain from above
- Dry terrace
I start out by moving our garden furniture out of the way, because this is our breakfast spot! Then I place the quilt flat on my terrace, usually about 1/3 yard away from the wall behind it, and parallell to the wall. Then I smooth it out really carefully with my hands from the center and outward. Kind of like smoothing out a quilt sandwich before basting. The flatter the quilt is to begin with, the easier everything becomes later.
Then comes the slightly ridiculous part.
Above the terrace there’s a second floor window, and that’s where I photograph the quilt from. I lean as far out the window as I safely can without falling out, because the goal is to get the camera as directly above the center of the quilt as possible. The straighter your angle is, the straighter the lines in the final image will look.
This is a typical photo from above before it's edited. You can see that the lines are almost straight, but not quite. I've also left a little room around the quilt, just to make sure nothing is cropped out.
You can absolutely do this with a good phone camera, but I use a Canon R6 Mark II. Most often I use a 50 mm lens if I can fit the whole quilt into the frame, otherwise I switch to something wider.
I also take quite a few photos to make sure I get at least one perfectly sharp image. I’ll often shoot slightly different exposures too — a little brighter and a little darker — just to make sure no areas are blown out or too dark.
And all the while, I’m basically hoping that no seagulls decide to poop on the quilt while I’m hanging out the window.
Once I’ve gotten the important cover shot, I head back downstairs and start taking detail photos instead. Close-ups, texture shots, maybe a “twist” photo, and sometimes photos of the backing fabric if it’s especially pretty. At that point it usually turns into a whole quilt photoshoot, because it’s no longer quite as critical to keep the quilt perfectly clean.
The big advantage of photographing quilts from directly above is that you get a much flatter perspective with less distortion in the lines and shapes. There will almost always still be some skewing – I rarely manage to get perfectly above the exact center of the quilt unless I want to risk my life – but the starting point becomes so much better and easier to fix in editing.
For editing I mainly use Lightroom. Lately Lightroom has gotten some really convenient ways to correct lines and perspective in photos, which helps a lot. I also adjust brightness, contrast, and color temperature there, as photos straight out of the camera often end up slightly too dark and cold. After that I move into Photoshop, where I remove the terrace background around the quilt.
After straightening the lines in Lightroom
After removing the background. I use the Pen tool, which I'm pretty quick at after years of experience! :-)
And then you've got an image that's finally ready to enter a pattern cover. Ta-da!
