Yesterday, when I wrote about this quilt, I told you that I thought I needed to write another post about all the silly situations I have been in while taking photos of my quilts. I hope you will share some of your stories too.

While I was taking the pictures for my first book, Intentional Piecing, I had this crazy idea that I wanted an alpaca in my photo.  Why?  Well, the Tell Me a Story quilt is all about telling stories through your fabric selection. I wanted the photo to tell a story too. I thought it would be funny to get the alpaca in the photo as if he or she were looking at the quilt and saying, “I see you know a lot about quilting, I know more about yarn myself.”  Silly, I know.  But that was the point!  A friend owns alpacas but they are really skittish creatures and get scared so easily. Every time the wind would make the quilt move even just a little bit, the alpaca would run off.  The owner was standing behind me, trying to get the alpaca to come back. It took forever and was quite amusing.

I remember taking a picture of this quilt, made with Sizzix dies, for a tutorial.  It had been snowing.  The snow isn’t very deep there against the wall but when I pulled over to take the picture, I got my car stuck in the snow with my youngest in the car as well. It took me quite a bit of time to get the car free and get home!

In other snow stories, I borrowed these snowshoes a few years ago when the snow was up to my hips in spots so that I could take a quilt photo.

See, it was even snowing while I took the photo!  I wanted to take a picture of Scrambled before I sent it off to Sherri Lynn Wood for her book.  So the timing was kind of “now or never,” hence the snowshoes.  I remember my neighbor was out with his dog and looking at me like I was completely crazy.

I guess you are going to get lots of snow related stories since I live in New England.  I finished this quilt for American Quilter Magazine in the winter but it was to appear in the summer issue. I didn’t want to send them a picture of the quilt in the snow for a summer issue so my husband and I brainstormed and realized that there wasn’t snow right along the ocean. We took the quilt to the beach and I can’t even tell you how cold it was that day. I just remember that it was painful!  And we stood there waiting for that lobster boat to enter the frame so that it would be in the picture.

As I mentioned in a recent post, when I took my quilts to a mill in Lawrence for photos, I must have driven over a bolt or nail in the mill parking lot so I had to drive home on a semi flat tire.  I had to get my tire fixed before bringing all the quilts home.

You know you have a good friend when she agrees to model for you, with a quilt, on the beach, with people looking at you kind of funny.  This is my friend Alyson and she helped make this picture dream a reality for Intentional Piecing.

As I also mentioned in a recent post, I really wanted to take a picture of Sixty Seconds on this barn that I noticed while out walking.  What I didn’t mention was that I didn’t know the owner.  It took me weeks to gather up my courage.  I knocked and introduced myself, interrupting the man’s lunch.  He then actually stopped eating, took pity on me, and went out and helped me hang the quilt with a ladder that he provided!

On a very hot summer day, I had my family help lug all these gardening books outside for a picture of my Stash Happy Tote.  Of course…it ended up being cropped to this:

There is a photo of My Tribe that has been pinned more times than any of my other projects.

It’s this one.  I guess that it was worth it to ask my step father to please set up an entire encampment in his yard with all of his reenactment stuff for a photoshoot (that took me two visits on two different days).  It was complete with a fire in the fire pit even!

There are so many more…like the time I dragged my three kids through the park, pulling a wagon that held my tripod and camera and quilts, and had them hiding behind bridges holding quilts with me screaming “don’t let go for anything!”

I am guessing that you all have similar silly stories to share!  Please do!  It’s good to laugh at ourselves.