What’s In A Name? Naming Your Art

| ellenanneeddy
Creeper?

It’s always a question. Sometimes we have better answers than others.

There is the mechanical approach: Study 225, Floral Composition or Noir 393. I do number my tapestries just to keep the confusion down. I have 1,219 documented quilts. I have to keep track somehow. I number them with their place in line, and add the year. This quilt is 1219-26.

It’s helpful. But that’s an awful name.

The name is something else. Your relationship with your piece starts sometimes before you start. An image that grabs you. Notes from a song. Colors in the garden. It gets inside you and swirls with your imagination. Sometimes that sugguests the name.

As you bring the piece into the world, step by step, you know a bit better what it is, what it means. Maybe. Sometimes I don’t for years. But you have to call the piece something other than “Hey you!”

Pretty Bird

If it’s a bespoke piece, I let the owners tell me. Their relationship with the piece is much more important. They tell me what it’s called.

Pinkie

Sometimes I do an art joke. The name should let people into the joke. Pinkie is an art joke. She was made as the spoonbill version of Reynold’s Pinkie.

Sometimes it’s a quilt in a series. I have a number of Floral Arrangements, because I’m fascinated with the idea of bugs as gardeners.

Fish Rising

The fish in the stream series echos that. The names aren’t all the same, but it’s such a strong image for me that I am compelled to come back to it again and again.

Royal Rails

Sometimes the creatures themselves name the quilt.

Rose Owl

Sometimes the components around the piece tell you what is going on. The roses and the moths display a warm spring night, scented by roses, and attended by moths.

You gather the pieces and you tell yourself stories about it. I find the background tells me the most. And it changes the story entirely. It tells you where and when this is happening.

This quilt started from some research where the octopus looked like they were creeping across the ocean floor. Even while swimming. I started to call him creeper.

He’s not that sinister. But he’s definitely hunting.

Sometimes, the title sticks. And you use it. Or you search for something else.

I can’t call this guy creeper. I’ve got to do better than that.

So how do you name your quilts?

Can you help me give Creeper a better name?

The Fourth Pin-Up Girl

| ellenanneeddy

If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll know I’ve been on a quest to clarify my process. It started with my process photos. I found I’m quite rigid with how I create work. It always feels like play. But the structure has to be the same, because the steps build on each other.

Pin-ups are a dress rehearsal. Mostly I use component quilting as my work model. I start each quilt with a central image. Then I add embroidered components around that image until it makes sense. At some point, I have a pile of embroidered bits and the background. That’s when I do a pin-up.

Why four? That isn’t rigid. As the pieces develop, you need a dress rehearsal to figure out how they work together. Whenever I’m not sure of the next step, I do a pin-up. Some pieces, I can pin them up and I know. Some take endless pin-up sessions. I place my components into the quilt on my design wall and stare at them for a while.

This one has taken four pin-ups so far.

What have I learned?

  • The octopus must be on an angle to work.
  • Yellow fish are too bright. The orange fish work better.
  • This is a dramatic background but it really doesn’t have a light source. I could build one but it’s busy enough already.
  • Too pink tentacles are too much.

Angle better than straight

Orange fish better than yellow

Overwhelming pink tentacles.

I wouldn’t know if I hadn’t tried it all in the pin-up.

I also fixed the tentacles so they’re better in place.

My best studio tool is the design wall. My most important process is to pin things up and really look. Because if I get it wrong and I stitch it down, I have the choice of it never being right or ripping for days.

Color by Contrast and Cast: Adjusting Your Tone

| ellenanneeddy

Whenever I work in beiges, I get in trouble. Perhaps I’m not in well enough with St. Kim the almost-virgin martyr, who is the patron saint of beige. It’s off my map. Perhaps I should light a candle.

When we think of color, we think of hues. Red, blue, green, yellow.

But color is so much more complicated than that. Which is the frustration of kindergarten crayons in a box. Too simple to be of much use. Hue alone is only a starting point.

Color is defined by many factors. What matters sometimes is not the hue, the raw color itself, but the contrast between the other factors. Extreme contrast sparks our interest and makes the definitions clear.

There’s a quilters’ tradition for this. Log cabins and shade and shadow quilts have always been built on a dark side and a light side. You separate your fabric, not by color, but by value, how dark and how light the fabric is. This quilt is divided dark and light, but the cast of the colors is a soft beige. It’s defined by what they left out as much as what they included.

This trick works for a million and one quilt designs. But all color is color. It works in thread work as well.

I’ve been working on the next octopus, which is striped in black and white. I could have done that. But it’s dull past hope. Shading black and white is a great exercise, but I didn’t want it for this piece.

Here’s where I got myself into trouble. Those somewhat pink tentacles are a bit disconnected from the sand-and-gravel colors of the octopus’s outside. Pretty but wrong.

The background surprised me too. I had been looking at some murky colors. But when I put up this piece, it was it. I didn’t even pin up something else. But it was loud.

I quieted it with some soft elemental seashells in neutrals. Pretty, but not enough.

I dulled down the yellow fish. I stitched several colors of purple over them to give them some depth and to dull them. Again, not enough.

I made some fish to match the under tentacles.

Of course, I missed the idea of changing the octopus. I gilded the octopus. This odd green-gold thread has become a favorite shader lately. It shifts the tone of the piece. Big change.

Anytime you go off your map with a piece, you’re in for an adventure.

I have high hopes for this piece, but it’s taken a bit of maneuvering to get there. We’ll see how the pieces go together.

Hummingbird Commission 4: The Background and the Applique

| ellenanneeddy

You would think that the background doesn’t have that much impact on a quilt. Something pretty to showcase your basic image, right?

Not my experience. The background sets several things in place. It sets the time of an image. And each background tells a different story. The images tell you the who and what. The background tells you how, why and where.

Here are the backgrounds we chose preliminarily for this piece.

They’re all good choices. They tell a different story. Is it daytime or night? Is the flower alone, or is it in a garden? Size tells you different things as well. Smaller pieces are more intimate and look more intricate.

Since this is a commission, it’s the owner’s choice. She wanted the soft background with lots of flowers.

I love these oil paint stick rubbings! I usually overstitch them to accentuate the texture. I did that here as well

Lately , with paint stick backgrounds, I’ve been stitching the whole background, rather than applying my image and stitching the background around it. It makes a smoother piece, and it blends in better.

These are stitched from the top with polyester Neon Madeira. Since I’m following the rubbing, I need to have it on top where I can see it.

Buto it’s still worth looking at it from the back. You can see the unstitched part that will be covered by the flower.

Here’s where the flower fits in. I edged the flower with an angled zigzag stitch, echoing the colors I used in the petals.

For the hummingbird, I wanted him to pop. So he got outlined in black. It sounds unoriginal, but black always has more impact and leads to a more defined edge.

We’re ready to back and bind here. Thanks for taking this journey through this quilt with me!

Hummingbird Commission 3: The Flower

| ellenanneeddy

Every hummingbird deserves a fine buffet lunch, so this one has a flower of her own. The flower is made from different pink lace sheers, cut into petal shapes and backed with Steam-A-Seam 2.

I love using sheers as flower petals. Petals are, by their nature, translucent. But the sheers need extra support. I use a piece of felt in a color that I won’t mind seeing afterwards.Steam-a-Seam 2 is an excellent glue, but it also stiffens the piece. I also have a piece of Stitch and Tear behind it all.

Steam-a-Seam 2 is a fusible glue sheet backed between 2 pieces of paper. You peel off one side, place your fabric on the glue, and it will stick of its own accord. Then you cut out your shapes. It leaves you with pieces much like color forms. You peel off the other piece of paper and you can place your pieces as you like.

When you’re happy with your placement, you can iron down your pieces. You’ll want a Teflon pressing cloth, because the glue will seep through your piece. Iron thoroughly on a medium-high Steam setting. You can clean the pressing cloth with a ScotchBrite Blue Scrubby for non stick surfaces.

All of that leaves you ready to stitch. I’m working with a zigzag stitch. Each petal needs to be outlined and detailed, but it really doesn’t matter in what order. So I can change the areas by petal so that I’m using different threads from my thread range across the flower.

Why go to the trouble of making the flower into an applique? Because after all that stitching, it’s going to pucker up and want a kiss. Cut off all those stabilizers, and you’ll have a flat and lovely flower for your quilt.

Want to see this completed? You’ll find the whole project on my Patreon Page.

It’s free to join!

Hummingbird Commission 2: The Bird

| ellenanneeddy

Last week we drew the hummingbird. Now it’s time to fill it in.

I’m working on a sandwich of Totally Stable (my drawing), felt, hand dye, and Stitch and Tear. What I want is an embroidered bird I can stitch on the surface of my quilt

My outlines are almost always black. They set a crisp line for the image. Here I used a black metallic on the bobbin. I am always working upside down because that’s where my drawing is. I zoned my bird, so I could tell where the colors would go. Also, metallic thread works much better from the bobbin where it doesn’t get as abraded by the machine.

The body is an emerald green made of greens and turquoise. The wings are three shades of green/ grey metallic. The throat is red and magenta,

Each color is another layer of stitching.

We went through the same process with the body and the throat. Green, turquois and lime for the body. Red and magenta for the throat.

You can watch the video of how this bird is created on my Patreon Page. We’ll be following it all the way to the finish.

A Hummingbird in the Flowers: A Commission

| ellenanneeddy

Part 1: The Drawing

I have a commission that I want to share with you.

I don’t do these often because commissions are hard. Commissions demand a lot of communication that sometimes doesn’t work as well as it should. It’s hard to talk about something that is strictly visual.

But this is for a friend. And it’s a small piece. We’ve talked through what she wants. It’s a 7×10-inch ruby-throated hummingbird with a flower. I’m pretty confident it will be what this lady desires.

Because it’s a small piece, I’ve decided to do a series of articles and videos about making it. It covers different skills and processes. For you, it’s a look behind the scene to see how quilts are made. For my owner, she has full documentation. You can all watch step by step how this quilt is created.

She wanted a red-throated hummingbird.

It all starts with a drawing. I draw out sometimes just my subject. Because this is a commission I drew out a number of birds so my owner could choose. These drawings are on Totally Stable, which is an iron on, removable stabilizer that has a good drawing surface. I use it for all my patterns.

This is the bird she chose. I need that bird flying left to right. But because the pattern goes into the back side, the face side will be left to right.

I also need to zone my pattern. She has a green body, grayish wings, and a red throat. Zoning reminds me what threads to use in the top of my machine. Each zone will have several colors within that range that go on the bobbin side. Since we’re upside down, that’s where they’ll show.

What’s next? Stitching in. And figuring out how to make the video program work better. Next week

Want to see this completed? You’ll find the whole project on my Patreon Page.

Death and Taxes

| ellenanneeddy

I’m writing this sad at heart. If I can’t pull the money together for the studio, I’m going to lose it to property tax at the end of August.

This has been a fairly desperate time for everyone, and I know that. When people can’t pay for groceries, you can’t really ask them to pay for art.

But if there is no money for art, there is no art. Art only happens when we make space for it. It doesn’t really matter what things are worth at this point. It’s a matter of paying a bill any way I can.

If my art has made you smile, if you take joy in my colors, if I’ve taught you something you wanted to know, or if I’ve helped in any way, I need your help now.

So far, I’ve put up a Patreon Page, put a number of my sewing machines on sale on eBay, and I’m putting my quilts on sale on Etsy at 40% off. If there’s a favorite piece you’d like, let me know, and we’ll make it happen.

Artists’ lives are full of insecurities. We create no matter what. But we can’t really create security. That comes from community. I’ve worked hard to make artist community available to people who need it. And now I need that too.

Can you help me, please?

Shop on Etsy!

I have all my quilts at 40%off. A world of color and light created in fabric and thread. Don’t you have an empty drab wall? The promo code for your discount is TAXSALE.

Join me on Patreon

I’m building a community of artists and art lovers where they can explore fiber art, contemporary quilting, textiles in eye candy, technique, and studio savvy. Explore videos, tutorials, expert techniques, and endless eye candy. You can support me and that community on Patreon.

If you wish to purchase a machine, let us know. We have a 770 Bernina, and a 99 Singer available immediately. Other parts machines too. Contact me for more information.

Thanks!

Ellen

Thermal Shock: Eye Opening Color

| ellenanneeddy

One of the hardest things in embroidery work is to get over the match instinct. After years of perfectly matching thread to my project, I’ve had to learn to pick out the highest contrast threads to make an image that really shows up.

In embroidery, contrast is everything. If it all mushes together color-wise, then you have a very mushy image indeed. Smooth color exchanges that are analogous and sit next to each other on the color wheel are pretty. But they don’t have much punch. So what you want is color that builds not on similarities but on differences. There are several kinds of contrast: color, tone, clarity, and temperature.

Today we’re talking about color, which is simply the hue and temperature. Is it red, blue, or yellow? Or an odd shade of green? It’s not as simple as it looks. There are a million reds, blues, and yellows. They are not the same.

Thermal shock is about the temperature of a color. Every color, no matter whether it is a cool or warm color, leans either towards having a cool or warm cast. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cool color or a warm color. There are cool yellows, there are hot blues. If all the colors are either cool or warm they’ll flow into each other like analogous colors. But if they’re not? You get thermal shock. It’s like standing in a cold-water sprinkler on a steaming, hot day. The effect is kind of visually electric.

Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green is an excellent book explaining thermal variations and how that creates differing colors. It’s set for watercolor, but it applies to all color theory. It’s a worthy book.

So along with the different hues, there are shade and sun versions of primaries. I’ve been playing with them on this phoenix.

I wanted this bird to jump off the surface. I’d decided to outline with in a yellow that leans into the sun to give it some definition. But I wanted it showy. So the colors I picked, cool orange, cool and warm yellows, cool and warm blues left it shimmery and gave it impact.

So here’s another contrast. All that bright sky and bird against misty grey clouds.

For a final contrast, I put small trees up and down the river, to have that clear cool green against all the soft clouds and the fiery bird.

Always look for contrasts. Blending is beautiful, but to give a piece impact with something as small as a line of stitchery, you need heavy contrast, either in hue, value, or temperature. It creates a pathway through your quilt. But it also makes your stitching shine.