I’ve built up a collection of photos of natural textures and nature macros over the years, and after looking at some amazing quilt work created by family and friends, it occurred to me to create photographic ‘quilts’ using some of these textures. I wanted to create the images using Lightroom’s Print module, but it limits you to square or rectangular images, so I had to be a bit creative with my solution. I first created a template in Photoshop, using a standard quilt pattern, and then filling in parts of the template, while making other parts transparent. I could then use this template in the print module of Lightroom, overlaid on a photo cell template I created to match up with the quilt pattern. I could then drag my texture photographs into the pattern to create my quilt… not the simplest of processes, but it worked!

I used photos I’d made using my lightbox of peacock feathers, shells and polished mineral stones, as well as photos made in the Highlands of lichens on rocks and mosses, and on Islay of the amazing rocks in Saligo Bay, and lastly some bark textures from the Yorkshire Arboretum.