Month: November 2024

Yellow Birds: Following the Compulsion

| ellenanneeddy

Anyone who has written an art statement knows that meaning is illusionary. I think it may be whether you are visually oriented or verbally oriented. Verbally-oriented people can tell you what everything means. They understand their visual architecture. I find them fascinating because I can’t do that.

I get haunted by images, by different animals. and by small worlds. I work with those images until I’ve worked it out. Sometimes I have an idea of what it means. Mostly I don’t until and only after I’m long done. Somewhere my mind must know what it’s about. But it’s not conscious. Instead, the images need to work their way out.

This year, I’ve had a compulsion for little yellow birds.

Those of you who know me well, know I had a rough time in high school and before. I was targeted by people who chased me, hurt me, and humiliated me, while other nice little apaths stood against the wall and watched snickering. I do not want to hear I should be over this. You don’t get over this. It’s happened and it’s who you are, forever. Because it happened, you live in a world where it always could happen again.

It’s not that I remain a victim. It’s that I have no patience with bullies, sociopaths, apaths, and people bored enough to do this for fun.

So most of my quilts are social commentary. They’re about living in a dangerous environment where there are predators. They’re about finding a safe way through.

Not safe, necessarily. Livable.

So in a world where we are discussing canceling peoples’ basic human rights, we’re not to complain, and where we’re supposed to trust a rapist to protect us, it seems no surprise that I’ve had little yellow birds finding their way through my quilts.

May they find their way. May we find ours.

Ferning: Adding Fake ferns to a Quilt

| ellenanneeddy

I’m a big fan of silk flowers and leaves. I love them as an inclusion. They add extra texture and color in a marvelous way.

So I was delighted when I went into the Galesburg Mission sale to find a pile of fake silk ferns.

I love swamps and wet lands, and ferns are just part of that. But they’re not easy to do either as stitchery or as applique. They are detailed, fussy and wonderful. But I haven’t ever stitched a fern I was truly happy with.

Not every fake fern will do. You need one that’s fabric rather than plastic. They usually come with a plastic support glued to the middle of the fern. That peels right off.

Your left with a lovely fern. They can be bent in any direction to fit right into your piece.

I’ve been working on this spoonbill quilt for some while now and I’m almost done. But my trees had bare bottoms. Ferns to the rescue!

I’ll show you how to stitch the ferns down next week. I could try to trace the edges, but they’re bound to do the shimmy under the needle. So instead, I’ll add a layer of cornstarch clear topping (Solvy) pinned over the top and stitch through that. The topping makes everything lie flat. If you use monofilament nylon, the stitching is invisible. When it’s all stitched down, you spritz the topping with water and it dissolves.

It goes without saying that you can do that to silk leaves and flowers as well. Check out It Came from the Dollar Store: Including Silk Flowers and Leaves in Quilts for more information.

Romantic Roses: Valentine’s Day for the Somewhat Grown Up

| ellenanneeddy

Do you remember Valentine’s Day as a kid?

I loved it. My mother made me a red and white dress for the day, and you brought valentines for everyone, and then you filled their mail box with them and found your own filled.

I was not much of a social butterfly. And I’m not sure I would have gotten any valentines if everyone didn’t send them to everyone.

But most of all, I loved all that color in the middle of the snow. Red, pink, and orange warm my heart whatever the temperature. Add a dash of purple. I could get drunk on it.

Valentine’s day is sort of a bust for a number of reasons around here. Mostly, Don doesn’t do holidays. And if either of us really wants something, we just go buy it. But I still get off on the colors.

Don takes me for a color bath every fall. He drives me around the stately homes of Galesburg and I gasp at the amazing leaves. This time, I happened to look down at the red roses beneath the trees. Absolutely breathtaking. Red, orange, pink. I might as well be drunk. So I started with a batch of red roses. I’d been wanting to do a garden quilt.

I have several ways I make roses, but my favorite is with spirals.

After cutting spirals, I glue them to felt. The felt is red because the color will show through. That’s a promise.

Once they’re all stitched, you can see the form better from the back.

Here’s how they look cut out.

I intend a sunflower and some hollyhock for this quilt as well. Yellow birds as an accent.

This is just pinned up and the leaves for the roses and the hollyhocks aren’t finished yet. But I’m excited. With all those fall leaves falling, we’ll need a garden in bloom. It’s just like Valentine’s day.