My quilt making excalated from a hobby in the early 1980's, to 30+ years working at the professional level in the quilt industry. There are my 7 books, a DVD, tapes of TV shows I've appeared in, file boxes of magazine articles and other publications of my work, boxes of slides and photos, but this is way too data intense for the only 'mildly interested family' to read!
Recently I had my online gallery shop: https://marystorishop.blogspot.com printed as a quick reference, not only for personal use but current customers to review the 222 one-of-a-kind art quilts presently on that site. As of this writing, 52 are currently available and 170 have been sold.
I selected Prestophoto.com to work with due to the ease of being able to edit & condense my website's information, revert it to a PDF, and then with a few clicks get a book in production.
This is the result.....I'm so pleased with the quality, price, & speed of production. There are a few things perhaps I might have done differently, like organizing the photos by year. However, it was never intended as a library book, it's a visual reference book for potential buyers of my work and eventually my family.
I'm so happy with it that I'm now organizing volume 2 to consist of another 100+ quilts. These were made for family/friends which were not included in volume 1. Additionally, there are scads of quilt competition pieces, workshop & book samples created before digitally documenting my work. Unfortunately, many images are still in photo format, as well as slides from years of presenting slide lectures to quilt guilds and at conferences, Some have been transferred to digital, but only as needed, so I have my work cut out for me. That's why I'm only concentrating on art quilts, none of my garments. Most of that collection has been acquired by the University of Wisconsin's Fashion Design Department.
Perhaps this approach might interest some of you to create a record of your work that can be easily accessed in one (or two) books.
Example of page layout....most feature 2 quilts but many have 4.
11 comments:
Hi Mary,
Thanks so much for posting about your order! If you have any questions creating future projects for your quilts please reach out!
Best,
Presto Support
https://www.prestophoto.com/
Hi Mary
Thank you for posting about your project, it turned out great! If you have any questions about future quilt books please reach out!
Best,
Presto Photo
https://www.prestophoto.com/
Wow..nicely done by you and the company, Presto! I have my blog printed to book format by year..it's my journal I will take to the nursing home with me!! Beautiful book, Mary, of beautiful work!!
What an immense amount of work you have done! With textiles and with organizing this book..........with another one yet to come. Way to go!
It's Mary here.....I have had my actual Blog printed occassionally by Blog to Print, but often it's been too large for 1 book since certain years I blogged with a lot of photos. At that point the cost was just too high and I got out of the habit. When I started the quest for this book, I began with Blog To Print, however because I had somehow lost the entire gallery blog last year and had to rebuild it, many photos didn't show up on that download so I had to go a different route.
Happily I discovered Presto which prints from PDF. So I copied/pasted my entire content of my gallery shop, edited it for content/spaceing etc. in Apple's word processor (Pages). Next I turned it into a PDF and downloaded to Presto..... The next book will be much more difficult as I'll need to find photos, titles, sizes, descpritions etc. and put those all in a sensible order.
This is such an impressive project, Mary. Thanks for the info and link- I'll look into it.
This IS a great idea. Not familiar with this company and realized not long ago that I'd stopped getting e-mails from Blog2Print, wondered if they'd stop doing this. Always nice to have options.
This is a great idea! A terrific way to look back on all you have accomplished.
I do think they did (and you!) a great job on your book. I use my blog more for a journal of my life and my art work life. HA I used to write in a journal every day or at least a few days a week. Having the blog is so much better so you can have pics to go with your writing(s)! Thanks for showing us another option!!!
I continue to learn from you, Mary. What a fabulous project to take years of creative work and make it portable. A different kind of family album to reminisce over in future years.
Great idea and a lot of work. I am so unorganized, even tho I don't have your body of work. Want to come and do mine?
Merry Christmas!
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