Month: May 2022

Lighting the Spark: creating thread images with contrast

| ellenanneeddy

Threadwork is delicate. Just because threads are tiny thin things. Just by their nature.

We can layer threads infinitely. But singularly they don’t have a lot of effect. So how do we keep threadwork from mushing into a soft blend? We need a spark. If we take just light and dark shades of a color, that’s a good start. But it’s bland.

What makes a spark? Contrast. Either in color, in shine or in temperature. High contrast keeps it from being dull. And since thread is such a little thing, it we can use intense contrast without overwhelming the piece.

sheen

The first thing we see with thread is it’s sheen. How shiny is it? Threads come from dull cottons, to smooth rayons and polys to sparkly metallics. The eye sees the sparkle first.

So if we want something to stand out, something really shiny will make the spark. Which is why I use Sliver, and a number of other flat shiny threads.

If you’re doing animals, you want their eyes to be the thing you see first. Sliver does that. You make an iris of any color, a black pupil, and a small iridescent spark inside the eye. It’s a spark inside a spark. And it brings an eye to life.

Or I can make my background shimmer by stippling sliver in gradated colors across the piece. Sliver is a delicate thread. It works best in a regular bobbin case. I use a matching polyester thread on top. If I stipple pretty much last, all the other stitching tells me where the stippling should be.

color

Color contrast always startles the eye. The highest contrast in color is always going to be the complement. Complements are powerful. The blue and peach make a spark between them to shade this bird.

The pinks are sparked by the yellow green overstitching that makes the feathers an flowers.

temperature

The hot gold details stand out against the smooth greens and blues and lights up the feathers.

black and white: Contrast in Value

Both black and white are extreme contrast. For threadwork, I’m careful of both of them. But they give us an edge. I almost always outline in solid black or black metallic. But on the raven’s wings, I overstitched the feathers with black to make them pop.

Contrast is always what makes our heads turn, our eyes turn, our hearts beat. And that’s the point to art, isn’t it?

Splitting the sky: The Advantage of Split Light Sources

| ellenanneeddy

I don’t piece well. It’s not my skill. Anything that takes accuracy and careful cutting really isn’t my skill. The new 770 Bernina came with a foot that does make it better, but I don’t normally do large pieced tops. I know better. It’s not pretty when I do.

But there are rare occasions when I piece a split light source top.

Why? Why walk into accuracy land and piecing?

A light source brings you fabric with direction, and a built-in world. That world can be integral by itself. But if you want to filter the light as if it were through haze, woods, or shadow, you can piece two light source fabrics to create that shaded look. There are several approaches, with different effects.

Vertical Piecing

Where the Heart is

Where the Heart Is was pieced from two separate yards of the same blue/orange color range. I lay both pieces together on the cutting board and cut them in gradated strips, 2″, 3″, 4″, etc. Then I sewed them together with the narrowest light of one to the widest side of the other, in gradation. Set in a vertical arrangement, it makes for light flowing through the trees.

Horizontal Piecing with a Frame

Envy

Envy was one horizontal light source yard, split in gradations with a half yard cut in 2″ strips put between. The piecing creates a sense of space. The narrowest strip in the gradation defines the horizon line.

Piecing within Multiple Frames

Sometimes I split the two fabrics with the light at the widest on one side and the dark widest cut so they can carry the light across the piece. Twightlight Time was also double framed with a 2″ and a progressive border. Having a narrower border on the top weights the bottom of the piece.

Piecing Machines

Lately, Don found me a Singer 99 at a yard sale. For those of you not familiar with these darlings, they are a featherweight industrial drop-in bobbin Singer. They only straight stitch, but the stitch is impeccable. They are tougher, and faster and they use bobbins that are still commercially available. I’d never seen one before, but I fell in love instantly. It took a little work and some creative parts searching, but Don got it working for me and it’s perhaps the best piecing machine I’ve ever had. Did I mention Don is my hero?

So I pieced the guinea hen’s background on it.

How do you keep it straight? It’s tricky. If I get them out of order the fabric doesn’t progress correctly through its colors. I make all my cuts, leave the fabric on the cutting board until I can number the pieces all on the back side. Since there are two pieces of fabric cut, I label my fabric, 1a,2a, etc. and 1b, 2b, etc. and chalk in the sequence on the ends so I can always keep them in order.

Expanding Fabric Size

Sometimes there’s just a beautiful fabric that needs to be bigger. That’s been known to happen too.

I needed a background for What the Flock, a grouping of guinea hens. I’m low on fabric and money right now, so I have to make do. I found a purple piece that should make a great meadow, but a yard was just a bit small. So I pieced in another half-yard to expand it. I cut the half yard in 2.5″ widths and graded the yard-long piece in segments of 9″, 8″, 7″, 6″, and 5″,

Seam Rollers

For those of you like me, who hate to run back and forth to the iron, there is a seam roller. You can use this gadget to flatten your seams right where you’re sewing. Roll it over the seam and you’ll have flat, ready-to-sew seams without the iron woman run.

I don’t piece often, but these backgrounds are worth it. I love the shaded light and the action of light of the fabric across the piece.

the irony of ironing: taming exploding fabric drawers

| ellenanneeddy
Sheers and metallic lace make the water for this fish

I have several kinds of fabric stashes. There is a small but excellent stash of hand dyed cotton and cheesecloth, and the stabilizers I use. They need to be kept separate because I’d never find anything again if they were not. But there is a sparkle stash, the living falling wall of sheers. And then there is the fabric with no name. I don’t know what you call it. It’s out of the drunken prom queen collection. Sheers with velour. Twinkle organza, sparkle tulle, printed lame. It was originally fabrics samples for fancy dresses.

Much of it came from the Textile Fabric Outlet, which still is at 2121 21st Street in Chicago. But I’ve bought pieces anywhere I found them in my travels. I hope and pray I have a lifetime supply. I haven’t been there in a long time, but they assure me they still sell samples and remnants.


The fabric gets put into different drawers, according to it’s purpose. I have a collection of plastic drawers where I keep fabric and thread. They’re plastic, light weight and cheap. No one ever said they were decorative or stable. But they hold quite a lot of clutter. They pop together like pop bead necklaces. They also unpop from time to time.

That’s when the drawers explode.

Last week one of the stack of two fell of it’s own accord where I usually sit in the cutting room. Thankfully I was not there. Drawers everywhere. Fabric everywhere. And of course since I get lazy and don’t exactly put things away, it all looks like crumply, rumply wads of indescribable stuff that is hopefully fabric. Who knows?

That, and my machine being still out to be fixed led to at least three days of intensive ironing and sorting. Yes, I know, iron is a four letter word. But this time it really helped me out.

Anthony Jones, a fellow quilter who’s taught at many conferences with me once pointed out the difference between pressing and ironing. Anthony started as a tailor and has gone onto quilting. But his early training was in couture. He told me that ironing is the flattening of fabric. It’s a sliding movement across the fabric. Pressing is ironing in one place to persuade a seam to be on one side or another. Pressing leaves the fabric in one place. Ironing moves the fabric, and sometimes your seam as well. There is a difference.

Well, in this case it took ironing. It turned out I could iron 3 drawers in one day. That sounded like process until I counted up to around 40 drawers. I think I have my non-creative fabric project for low energy days for a long time.

One other word about ironing, it’s all in the fabric content. Anything that is a test tube baby,(nylon, rayon, and polyester) can and will melt. I’ve done it once in demo. It was quite dramatic. For regular cotton ironing I use a Black and Decker Classic iron, a recreation of the 1950s black irons. They use very high heat and generate a lot of steam. For the test tube babies, one of the modern irons that are made for polyester clothes is safer. I no longer use expensive irons. These fit my needs just fine.

I found fabric I’d long forgot. I have small sample bridal and dressy fabric samples that make the best dragonfly wings and bug bodies. And wonderful lace and organzas that make landscapes and sky washes. There were wonders I hadn’t seen in years.

And being someone who never really cleans, folds or puts away except when drawers fall out, I had no idea how much less space it takes up to store folded iron fabric instead of stuffing it in a drawer. Who knew?

My machine is home, 6 drawers are ironed and we will resume the channel to chaotic embroidery until the next disaster occurs.

FENCED IN: Making Fences

| ellenanneeddy

Most artists have something they do specially. The secret to that is that special focus usually camouflages that which they are not good at. I’m no different. I can’t sew a straight line to save myself. So I don’t. I do nature images where straight lines aren’t a problem. I don’t do well on straight line piecing either.

Except that that is a limit. And I hate limits. So every so often I push past that and try no matter how bad I am at it.

I’ve been working on a garden series called bird feeders. The premise is that every good garden feeds and cares for everything that lives within that garden. And some things just don’t grow without support. Which means a fence. Of course I’m not talking about clean new straight fences. What fun is that?

I’m not good at fences. You should be able to piece a good fence. But I’m really not good at piecing. These are three things I’ve tried instead of that.

Years ago, I did a child’s book called Tigrey Leads the Parade. It was about my dog who ran away daily as an art form. Since it involved escaping from the yard, it involved a lot of fences. This is a fence, embroidered with #5 pearl cotton on a tea towel.

Tigrey Leads the Parade

I love these stitched fences. But they were tiny. When I wanted something bigger, I tried something with an oil paint stick rubbing. I found a border edging at Menards and rubbed the fence texture on to my background fabric.

Bird Feeder: Sunflower

I consider this a mixed success. I like the fact that the fence looks crooked and old. But the distortion, even with straight stitching and stabilizer was pretty ferocious. Were I to do it again, I’d use another layer of Stitch and Tear.

So when I went to do the next piece I had some left over gray pieces I’d used as sidewalk. I used them to make the fence. The wood grain stipple helps it, I think,

They didn’t quite work as realistically, but I think they made a good fence. And good fences, as Mr. Frost knows makes good neighbors. And better quilts.

Do I have it down yet? I don’t think so, but I think I’m closer. If we don’t push past our limits, the limits are real. No one wants that, right?