Hanging It Up: The Quest for the Perfect Hanger

Ever since I started pinning my quilts on Pinterest around four years ago and posting them on Facebook over a year ago, I've been trying to find interesting ways to photograph my quilts.  I love seeing the photos of quilts hung in beautiful outdoor locations on other Quilters' blogs.  Unfortunately, my house sits on a typical suburban lot with no interesting tree branches or fences to hang my quilts on nor do I have a beautiful garden. Plus, I really don't want the neighbors seeing what I'm doing since none of them are quilters, I don't want to have to explain myself.  So the majority of my quilts have been photographed, using my hand-me-down iPhone 4 given to me by my son when he upgraded to a new one, on my small front porch on the bench or hanging from either the screen room door  or outside patio door.  The bench is a nice place to photograph my quilts but sometimes to get the full effect of the quilt, you need to hang it up.

My quilts were first hung on clear plastic skirt hangers and then I graduated to using white skirt hangers purchased from Wal-Mart but I still wanted a more polished look.  This was a sorry attempt to hang my quilt on an angle and it almost fell off the top hanger.

Always on a lookout for the right hangers, I thought I found my answer when I was looking through my Material Obsessions book by Kathy Doughty and noticed that when she photographed her quilts outside, she used these metals clips with S hooks and the search was on.  The closest that I could get to this was purchasing metal beach towel clips and 3" S hooks.

I  really liked how it photographed but the problem was that sometimes the S hook would fall off of the clips when I was just about to hang it which is annoying when you're standing on your tippy toes.  BTW, this quilt was hung on my garage door which is now a new location for a quilt photo shoot and you should have heard when one of my neighbors was driving by and hitting the car brakes to see what I was doing.

So, again I went searching and finally found what I have been looking for:  Hanging Boot Clips with Swivel Hooks, all one piece, so no falling hooks.  I found these on Amazon where I also found the metal beach towel clips and don't know why I didn't see these boot hooks before when I was searching earlier. Here is the link for these clips.  Hanging Boot Clip with Swivel Hook

Now with the winter weather finally here with a blast, it looks like I'll be taking photos inside the house.  The screen room is too cold so I was noticing how nice the morning light is in the living room.  I started thinking about buying a photo shoot backdrop rack to hang the quilts but at a price of over $200 for a good one or making one with PVC pipes for $10 but with no adjustments for changing width or height, this thought went quickly on the wayside. I did take the above quilt photo on the hanging rack in my studio but since it's in the basement, the lighting isn't so great.  I could get a photo lamp or I could finally take the time to learn how to edit photos on PicMonkey or maybe I should get an iPhone 7 since I heard the camera is really great.  A new search is on!