Finding inspiration and fighting with Photoshop

So I decided to sew a gift... whoopdeedoo! It's a great idea if a) you actually know how to sew and b) you have any idea as to what you want to create. Otherwise you are lost in a sea of Google images and amazing quilters who are well beyond your skill level. That's where I started.

I was lost.  Sadly, the person I usually turned to when I was in this conundrum was my friend who I was hoping to surprise.  Damn.  So I began by looking at pictures of us together, hoping that some inspiration would strike.  Nothing.  So I started looking at what other quilters were up to.  Boy, I was suddenly very intimidated by the prospect of this project.

After much consideration I realized that one quilt in particular was sticking with me.  It was Dan's Orange Lizard of Piece and Press (http://pieceandpress.blogspot.com/).  I would highly recommend clicking through to his blog.  Seriously.  Go there now. Stop reading this.  Listen to me and go there!  Now you're just being stubborn.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/73440393/orange-t-rex-quilt 

The mastery of composition, colors and craft are all very apparent.  You can see why it stuck with me!

Adequately inspired I moved on to the next step.  I figured the first part of the process was then making a stencil.  Ok, I could do it the old school way, with tracing paper and a large window or I could play with Photoshop.  Which I was under the impression was the computer program for photo manipulation.

So I started fiddling with Photoshop.  Not the most straight forward program I've ever worked with.  But with enough patience and access to Google I came up with this:

Me and Al

Chickadee- 1, Photoshop- 0.  Ha, battle won, but next comes the harder part than fussing with a computer program.  Making this into anything even resembling a quilt!