Free Projects

I'm back on track this week with my Wednesday Web to bring you links to some great sites which offer free quilt projects. First You Can Quilt This which offers this gogeous table runner design to download and several other free projects too. The site has hundreds of patterns for sale at very reasonable prices which are available as downloads so you don't have to wait for them to be sent in the mail. The sister site You Can Make This has other crafty projects such as children's applique designs, clothing and bags.

Another site with 24 free designs to download is Quilters Online Resource which features designs for applique and piecing. You can subscribe to the site for a year for only $15 and get access to all the beautiful and unusual designs.

Of course bloggers are very generous with their tutorials so I have to mention a couple of my favourite blog projects:

This Rocket Ship design from Don't Look Now is on my to do list for my nephew. Kelly has other fab tutorials too.

Kim has lots of great projects on her blog Bitty Bits & Pieces including this 'Itty Bitty Keeper' which is ideal for my new camera.

Kim has several of her patterns published on Moda Bake Shop too and that is definitely worth a visit. In fact it should keep you busy browsing  for the rest of the day if not the week!!

Wednesday Web - Colour Palette Generator

 

I've discovered a really cool web tool which is perfect for picking colours for quilts - a colour palette generator. Just upload a photo like the one above and in a few moments you have a palette like this:

Isn't that brilliant?!! It's free to use at Big Huge Labs  -  BUT before you go read my tip below on resizing photos!

Resizing Photos:
Digital cameras now take photos which are very large files and if you upload these to the internet they take ages. You can resize your photos very easily using a free 'Image Resizer' program from Microsoft which makes uploading photos so much quicker:

1. First download then install the programme from here (scroll down to find 'Image Resizer')
2. Now find the folder where you store your photos
3. Right click on a photo and choose 'resize image'
4. Choose from small, medium or large -I usually use medium
5. Image resizer now makes a copy of your photo at this new size
6. You can resize many photos at once by selecting them all before right clicking and resizing
   

I use it to resize all the photos for my blog and my photos upload really quickly - have a go, its really easy!

Wednesday Web - Common Craft Show

Do you find yourself trying to explain blogging to friends and family? I find it really hard to get across to some people how blogging works and why it is such fun. Lee Lefever has produced some fantastic simple explanations of the wonderful web and things like blogging, twitter, online photo sharing etc. Just search on Youtube for the 'Common Craft Show'. Here's his take on blogs:

Also this week I've added a new free tool to my blog posts called 'Link Within' which shows links to some of my previous posts. Do you like it?

Wednesday Web- Picnic

Picnic is a free online photo editor. You can use it to adjust your photos for your blog or for printing e.g you can improve the colour, crop the photo or change the size.  It also has some fun special effects which I think are great to play around with to give you ideas for quilts.

The photo above is one which my sister in law took and is it very beautiful so doesn't need any basic adjustments, but here are a few effects I used:

 Pencil Sketch

I uploaded the photo and clicked on the 'create' tab and scrolled down to the 'Pencil Sketch' option. This is a great way to show up the outlines of the petals which I could trace to make an applique pattern. I also think it gives ideas for possible quilting designs. A useful feature is the 'Undo' button as you can go back to your original photo and try another effect.

Pixellate

Hex Cell

These two effects could be used as patterns to piece a quilt - if you are very patient!

If you like strip piecing try the 'Waterfall' effect to play with stripes using the colours in the photo:

Waterfall

Now I forgot to click 'Undo' after the waterfall and went on to try 'Smudge' - look what I got!!

I love this!

And finally for something completely different try  'Hypnotic'

Hypnotic

Wow that was fun!  There are more things to try out too - slideshows and collages and tons more special effects. You could pay to have more options but I think there is loads to keep me busy on the free version.

Try it for yourself by clicking here!

Wednesday Web - Wordle

This is the start of a new series of Wenesday posts which I'll be using to show you some fun things which are free on the wonderful web. Since my day job is supporting the use of  IT to enhance learning in primary schools this will be a good way for me to pass on things I use in my work.

This week the subject is 'Wordle'. You can use this free online tool to transform text into beautiful displays in an instant! The example above was a description of patchwork and quilting for beginners on Quilter's Cloth.

I copied the text then went to Wordle and pasted it into the box. Click 'Go'and hey presto your words displayed in a fun colourful graphic! You can change the font and colours seperately or just click on 'Randomize' to see different combinations. Here's another using this same text:

You can also type a blog address into Wordle and see a display of the frequently used words on the blog. This is a really interesting way of seeing what you've blogged about recently. Here's mine:

Now you need another little free program to quickly save the image for your blog - a screen capture tool. You could use the Printscreen button on your keyboard but then you would have to crop the image - too fiddley!! There are lots of free screen grabbers out there but the one I use is 'Screenhunter'. This is so easy. Once it's installed, just launch the tool, then every time you want to grab a portion of your screen press F6 on the keyboard, drag a rectangle around the image you want and Screenhunter saves the jpeg in 'My Pictures'.

Now I've told you about 2 cool freebies so that's a bonus one for starters! Please let me know if you try it or use it in your blog and tune in next week for more free fun from the web.

PS I was browsing through the gallery on Wordle and came across this - just right for today: 'Lest We Forget'