Pixelated

I recently finished my first pixel quilt. It's killing me not to include a picture of it here, but you'll just have to wait until mid-April after my nephew's birthday to see the finished piece. 

The experience of creating a pixel quilt was pretty awesome and quite a test of my creative abilities. You see, I had to create the pattern for my nephew's quilt using nothing more than a tiny little picture on the internet and some graph paper. I sat for an hour staring at the picture letting my eyes blur so that I could recreate it in pixel form on my graph paper...one square on the graph paper equalling one 2.5" square on the quilt top. The result was a surprisingly good reproduction of the character I was trying to recreate...and it only took 500 squares (!).

As much as I enjoyed the design process (and I really did), I knew there had to be an easier way to create these patterns.

Enter MyPhotoStitch.com. The site is intended to create cross stitch patterns from photos, but the concept can easily be applied to pixelated quilt patterns. Simply upload your photo and it spits out a pattern complete with DMC thread recommendations and everything!

Here is the second page of the pattern that was created when I uploaded a photo of a felt brooch. When uploading, you get to select how large the pattern will be, whether you want symbols shown, as well as how many thread colours will be used. More threads and larger size equal more detailed pattern.

It would take some tinkering, but I'm thinking it would be pretty easy to get the basics of a pixel quilt pattern going from these patterns. Instead of the DMC thread colours, I would look to Kona solids (or similar) to match my colours.

I certainly have enough projects on the go at the moment (and more waiting to get started), but once I have some free time on my hands, I'm definitely going to be playing around with this fun new tool.