Picture Perfect

This is the worst time of year for me to try to take quilt photos. It's dark when I leave for work in the morning, and dark when I get home. Usually I take all of my pictures on the weekend...that is, if it's not rainy, wet, dreary, or cloudy. But I had to take these pics today, because I needed to get this quilt into the mail for a charity raffle and I had only just finished it last night!!! So I grabbed the quilt on my way to work, ran around base on my lunch-break looking like a crazy quilt lady, and with the help of a few friends I was able to get some almost great photos:)

Today was a rare sunny day, so I thought everything was going to work out perfectly.

First I had my friend, Merv, help me out. He's a tall, crazy, opinionated "older" man and had no idea how to hold a quilt. I couldn't stop laughing because he kept holding the quilt every way but the right way. First, he just grabbed it on two random points and yelled "take a picture!". 

"I can't take a picture like that! You have to hold it where I can see the front!" I yelled back.

He started wrestling with the quilt (and cursing under his breath), flipping it sideways, upside-down, and every-which-way possible, and by the time he got the top of the quilt up-and-forward I was almost rolling on the ground with laughter.

I was finally able to get an almost-decent picture (above) when Merv stood on a bench (so the quilt wouldn't touch the  wet ground). I realized, though, that the quilt was just a backdrop and a perfect frame for the shadow of the basketball court fence that stood between the sun and us.

We then tried to lay the quilt across the bench, but, again, we couldn't let it touch the ground (the ground is ALWAYS wet here), so Merv held one end of the quilt while it was draped over the back of the bench. You can see Merv's end was much higher than the bench, and I thought the poor guy had probably had enough, so I didn't gripe about it, and graciously took the picture.

I got back to my job, and asked my friend Jasmine if she could help me try again and then she became the victim. She's tall for a female so she could almost just hold it up high enough, but the wind was whipping the quilt around like crazy and most of the time it looked like she was wearing a quilt suit. 

She has scrawny little arms and I was afraid she was going to tire out too fast to get a good photo.  I was no help, because I had broken out in hysterical laughter again watching her struggle with the quilt and fighting the wind. It is so funny the sounds people make when they're trying to hold a quilt. 

Fortunately, she is very good-natured, was laughing too, and didn't seem to mind that I was almost in tears.

We were able to get this action shot (above) that almost looks good except you can see the far-end is blurry.

Finally, in between gusts of wind, I was able to get the photo above--probably the best of them all, but really it's my least favorite. Sometimes the best pictures don't tell the best stories. The other pictures I took today mean more to me than most of the other ones I have taken of quilts. They weren't the prettiest, or most artistic, but they will always remind me that I'm really lucky to have friends who are willing to go through some trouble to help me out. 

Thanks Merv and Jasmine!!

(that hump in the picture below is where Jasmine had thrown the quilt over her head when she finally gave up :)

This quilt was made from the Cherry Pie quilt kit from Fig Tree and Co. and was quilted by the ever-amazing Asta.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish-it-up Friday and

My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday.