Photo turned into a wall hanging

Do you guys remember 1999?  The year Prince - or whatever his name is these days - sang about?   The year before Y2K?  The year these totally awesome panoramic size photos were all the rage?

It was also the year before Gardener Guy and I got married.  We went with his family to Lake Powell and stayed on a houseboat for a week.  That was the first time only time I've ever done that and it was pretty damn fun.

My sister in law took this photo of us at some point in the trip, I don't remember when. It's now my favorite picture of us. I've always wanted to hang it up, but ironically it's kind of small.  Too big for the picture table, but not quite big enough for a space on the wall.

So, being the crafty chick I am, I decided to enlarge it and make it a quilted wall hanging.  I was further inspired when I saw this post by Elizabeth on Sew Mama Sew.  What an easy way to sew itty bitty pieces of fabric together!  I had to try it.

 It worked okay, but I think I need practice.  That interfacing is kind of stretchy, especially when you start sewing all the rows.  Some of my seams are a little arched, so don't look too close.

While I was trying new things in my quilting, I thought I'd give "thread painting" a shot. I wanted the clouds to be light and barely there, like in the photo.  I didn't want to fuse some glaring white (or even off white) fabric onto my beautiful sky.

I'm not sure I pulled it off.  From a distance, you don't even see the clouds. I don't think white thread was the best thing to use. Maybe the thread painting works better with a bunch of different colors, instead of just one.

I feel like this post has gotten kind of wordy, so I'll save my super easy way of hanging it for another time.

Oh!  While I was tooling around the blogosphere the other day, I came across another photo turned into a wallhanging over at Upstatelisa. Go check it out, it's gorgeous!!