Month: June 2020

Leftovers: The Art of Including Something from the Past

| ellenanneeddy
Butterfly Garden

I know some people who meticulously plan their quilts. I envy them. They draw them out on cocktail napkins or in a notebook, or a design wall. And it doesn’t change. They have a straight line vision and if they were in a boat you’d say they were rowing to the shore.

I’m just not one of them. I walk into the studio, look at what I’m working on and the squirrel process begins. You know what I mean. I see one thing and it makes me think of something else in a bin somewhere that I know is perfect except that I ran into something even better when I moved a pile over and I found something left over from another quilt.

Elements from Butterfly Barden

Grotto Gem is one of the left over bits from Butterfly Garden. It didn’t quite work with the others but it was magic but itself.

Let’s just say it’s like treasure hunting. There isn’t a map, just the memory of the myth. I’m in a boat roaring down the river without a paddle. I cling to the side and whats where the river of creativity takes me.

Somewhere I have the perfect butterfly, bird, frog, mushroom, name your critter, waiting to go into that new quilt. All I have to do is dig deep enough for it.

In the brand new studio? Are there piles in the brand new studio? Already?

OF COURSE THERE ARE.

I’ve gotten quite precious about left over bits. And I produce them in bulk. If I decide to do mushrooms I am likely to do ten of them when I only need two.

Stag Party

Why?

It’s process. Left over mushrooms in the studio are not different than left over mushrooms in the refrigerator. Did you fry them with bacon and sherry? You know full well theyll go into the next casserole seamlessly.

But its easier to do them in a lump. The machines are all set a certain way, for free motion applique, or for bobbin work, or for zigzag embroidery. The backgrounds are on thin felt, hand dye and stitch and tear. And I’ll have a basket of the thread colors I want to feature. And rather than make two mushrooms for a quilt, I’ll make ten just to have the left overs, waiting for their time on another quilt. It’s also in an organized set of colors. Mushrooms on another day may not feature neon orange, but I always reserve the possibility. They make a collection of mushrooms that go with each other, and that is useful again and again.

I’m going to show you some quilts, some done and some not finished, that were left overs to start with.

In the Reeds 2

This back and this fish sat in the same bag for years. I took out the background and the fish fell onto it. What can a girl do?

I purposely made way too many moths for this owl. The owl is from a quilt that simply didn’t work. They’re both in process.

But one of the moths found it’s way into Stag Party, and I have two more pinned into another quilt.

Ladybug Rising

This aggressively pink background sat in the suitcase until this ladybug came along.

My point is that extras are part of pulling creation forward. They move on the conversation of what you’re working on, into other work, which asks other things of you. They are a natural part of studio work, which is the training of your art.

And your art is a precocious child who needs love, permission, more crayons and free time to find her way. Celebrate it all. Especially the leftovers that start up the process.

left over moth

As You Sew So Shall You Rip: Mistake Management

| ellenanneeddy
On a roll Headed the wrong direction

You know that feeling. Working on a project. Almost ready for the next step. Pushing through.

And all of a sudden the process you sailed into is just wrong this time. There you are. A million stitches later with a mess.

I’ve been in process with a beetle quilt that felt like charted water. Sometimes you really have to figure out new tech to make it sing. Sometimes you do something you know you know. Sometimes it works. Sometimes…..Sigh.

This morning I woke up and realized my shaggy applique was too broad a step too far.

I’d started with cutting into an extra layer and exposing the under bark in squares. Unfortunately things don’t necessarily look the way you think they will. It looked more like a chess board for beetles.

About two hours later I had the stitching out and could re do it.

In this case less is definitely more. Much happier with this bark treatment.

When do I rip something out? Not necessarily when something isn’t perfect. I don’t happen to believe perfect is very pretty really. But when something doesn’t give the look I want, or if it spoils my enjoyment of the piece. Or if I’m embarrassed by it. Then I rip.

branches in properly

Of course no one can tell you that. You are the only one who can make you pick up a seam ripper. No one else has the credentials or the rights.

Two hours later I’m back on target and much happier.

The moral of the story is that it isn’t what you think something will look like. It’s what it actually does look like. You have to look. The best piece of equipment in my studio is a photo wall I can pin a piece into and photo it, process by process, step by step. Then I can really see if I like what I see.

Color Theory: The Tug Across the Wheel

| ellenanneeddy

Knowing the definition of a word is a pinpoint on a map. It tells you where you are. It doesn’t tell you how to get where you want to go. It’s the rawest of beginnings.

In the same way, color theory feels like the the dreariest driest subject in the catalog of art education. We look at the wheel and say the canticle, red and blue make purple, red and yellow make orange…. It feels like a recitation from kindergarten. And sadder still, it’s not always true. We’ve all mixed yellow and blue to get the most grizzly browns. It feels like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. A nice story for children.

Part of what we’re missing with that is the reality that it’s a theory. It works, simply when it does work and when it doesn’t, we need to explore why. That’s mostly about imperfect color. Color me surprised. So many things are imperfect in a imperfect world.

But the real question is not where we are on the map but where can we go. What color theory really describes is the relationships between colors. Within the color wheel, the spots within that wheel define the same kinds of relationships between different colors. Those relationships go back to that primary list of monochromatic, complementary, and analogous color themes that seem so very dull. Because they define the tension between colors.

The distance between colors, creates the pull across the wheel. The closer they are to each other, the least pull. The least tension. The least excitement.

The farthest distance any color combination has is directly across from each other, as complements. Those are combinations that tug and pull and electrify us. Colors right on top of each other are smooth and slide into each other.

It’s not one combination. It’s a circle of combinations that create the same feeling. We can move the circle endlessly and get the same energetic result.

Daylily ?Dance

Daylily Dance goes all around the color circle with neutral gray blocks as an inner/outer framework. The relationship of each complementary pair, kicks it over the moon color wise.

How does that change in thread in stead of fabric? Fabric is macro. It’s large strokes of color. Thread gives us micro choices. But the relationships on the color wheel stay stable and chart our color choices. We know from where the colors are on the wheel, how they will make our art feel.

A Thousand Crayons: Color Theory For Thread

| ellenanneeddy
Moth made of zigzag freemotion zigzag applique

Zizgag applique is the fussiest thing I do. This is the most time consuming thing I do. Every so often I tell myself it’s too much work. It’s endless layers of stitching

So why do I always come back to it? I remind myself that nothing else looks like it. There are a number of reasons. Poly and rayon threads are incredibly beautiful. The grain of thread stitching leads itself to very tiny dashes of color that the eye blends on it’s own.

Eye of the moth’s wing

The process is one layer of color on top of another, in zigzag stitching. It takes forever.

The threads I’m using are a 40 or 30 weight thread. That means if you laid 40 threads side by side, they would measure one inch. They are very lightweight, but it allows us to stitch over and over the piece.

The thread color choices are almost unlimited. If feels like having a box of one thousand crayons. I actually added up what was on the chart of Madeira Poly Neon and found it was only 600. I don’t feel gypped.

Will other 40/30 weight threads work? Absolutely. Rayon too. I just wanted to show you how extensive the choices are.

Madeira Poly Neon thread. My favorite go to.

Color charts always amaze me. But they really don’t tell us very much. They’re raw material like a shopping list. What matters is what we do with them. The choice of thread colors is a lecture on it’s own. I’ll spend several blogs with you talking about why I use the colors I do and where. I’ll also give a short tutorial on zigzag embroidery, zoning a pattern, and placing it into a quilt.

‘Both owl and bug are zigzag embroidered applique in poly and rayon threads.

We’ll go behind the technique and explain the color choices in some future blogs. Follow along and I’ll show you what I can do with a thousand crayons.

Fighting the Print: Art, and Other People’s Fabric

| ellenanneeddy
Artifact: Wind over Water

I am a stitch junkie. Almost nothing is a exciting to me as stitchery. Nothing is as cool as new thread. And I’m a magpie. Make mine extra shiny please.

I fell in love with solid colors in the 80s when I started really focusing on stitching. I went to hand dye when I needed more excitement (and I always need that!) I didn’t want anything to distract me from the stitchery

And when it comes to prints, I’m so torn. You either play with a print or you argue with them. I love them. But they can struggle with the stitchery. Unless you use them well, you end up with them fighting each other. And finally, using most people’s prints in art is a bit like wearing someone else’s underpants. You know it really belongs to someone else and that feels very wrong. So most of the time, I buy prints for my aprons and quilt with my own hand dye.

This is a story about changing technology and breaking your own rules.

I get seduced. There are some prints that just are too good to leave alone. I connect with them and they just slide under my “don’t quilt with other people’s fabric” rule.

Don’s birthday card

This is a little fabric card I made for Don for his birthday. Don looked so much like this owl when he was sleepy, that I quilted it with Madiera Supertwist Metallic.

Madeira Supertwist Metallic Thread

Supertwist is a beautiful thread. It twinkles. Like all metallics, it breaks a lot. A #90 topstitching needle helps and so does Sewer’s Aid. but at bottom you’re going to break a lot of thread. But it has a really nice see through quality that doesn’t distort or distract from a print.

I fell in love some time ago with paint stick rubbings.

This very pretty piece of handdye fabric was rubbed with paint sticks and rubbing plates
and then embellished with charms, ribbons roses and yarn.

I’m conflicted about the rubbing plates being someone else’s designs, but again, I can be seduced. I love rubbed fabric!

What I wanted was to follow the rubbed design with the stitchery. I was so unsure how to use the rubbed designs until I found this cone holder from Superior Threads that reduces the thread breakage almost to nothing. Beautiful metallic thread exactly embellishing the print for rubbed fabric.

Superior Thread Holder, available at Amazon

I still have a lot of reservations about other people’s designs. But sometimes I just have to play with them. I’ve done a small series of these pieces that I’m calling Artifacts, because they’re found bit’s of other people’s design included in my own. With them, I’ve allowed couching, found charms and ribbon flowers. But I do think they’re fun, and it’s good to break your rules every so often to be sure they’re rules that matter.

925 Artifact Being 1

These quilts are all available for sale at my Etsy Shop