Month: December 2024

From Patterns to Art: My Quilt Projects From 2024

| ellenanneeddy

It’s that time of year, when I look at the pile of quilts at my feet and review what I did last year. I made 46 quilts this year, large and small.

Because of health issues, I haven’t pursued shows right now. My heart doctors say things are staying stable, and I have enough work to promise a show, so I will be doing that in 2025.

How does an upcoming show affect work? It means the niggly questions get put to the side. You produce as much as you can. So you don’t do things you need to ponder about for a while. No big experiments.

Since I wasn’t prepping a show, this was the year for those niggly questions. All kinds of experiments.

Waterfalls

I figured out how to make a waterfalls frp, organza and lace.

Pine Trees

I worked out a new way to make pine trees from cheesecloth.

Desert landscapes

I worked on deserts, sand and cactus.

Cloud Shapes

I studied clouds.

Sunflowers

And sunflowers.

Yellow Birds

I had a desperate need for small yellow birds.

Major Quilts

Here are the large quilts I finished.

Visual Paths

Here are the visual paths I made.

small work

Here are the little quilts

It’s easy to feel like I’d done less this year. I have had years where I produced more. But I’m pleased with the questions I solved, the skills I built and the creatures new in my world. The quilts are really just a by product.

Most of these quilts are available for sale on my web and Etsy site. The Etsy sale is over, but you can always make an offer on a quilt, if it’s a bit out of range. And if you have work of mine, you can always trade up. Those of you who have quilts of mine are family, because you house my children. You always can have the family discount.

My Etsy Shop

Ellen’s Etsy Shop

Art Jokes: Is that Really Funny?

| ellenanneeddy

I have been known every so often, to make an art joke. Not a play on artists’ names or a verbal exchange. Every so often, I take a fairly well known piece of art and place its content within the artmostphire where I live.

The new roseated spoonbill quilt is named Pinkie, after the Gainsborough Pinkie

Why? Partially because it amuses me. I see most people as animals, not in a negative way, but in the sense that we live as animals do in a flesh-and-blood world. I embroidered my pinkie as a roseated spoonbill in her wild coastal setting.

Does it change the value of my Pinkie, to know that about her? May be. It’s nice to know where things come from.

But like all good art, it changes how we think. My Pinkie is a lovely creature, looking formidable and wild and yet fragile where she is. The girl, Sarah Moulton (1783–1795), is just as formidable. Her ribbons were thrown to the wind, but I get the feeling she could make her commands known and obeyed. Basically, your standard teenager. For all that, her father deserted her and she ended up in school in England where she died of a cough when she was twelve.

My point is that neither beauty or poise keep us safe in this world. It’s an odd mix of good luck and strongminded will that keeps us going,

I know. It’s not funny. But in the tradition of court jesters everywhere, the point is to make us think differently. I’m short enough. I might as well apply for the job.

I also did this with Matisses The Dance.

A Day Off: What Do I Do When I Can’t Sew?

| ellenanneeddy

Usually, Saturday is the day I prep the blog. Sometimes I’m a bit ahead. This week I was not. And last night my leg went out.

So when the ice and rain hit today, Don declared a studio day off. I spent the day working on photos of the new quilts I’ve just finished. And I decided to make meringues.

I’m a good cook, even if I’m a bit heavy in the butter, cream, and beef department. I’m pretty good most of the time. But every year or so, I have a state-of-the-art disaster: the chainsaw chicken massacre, where I tried to bake stewing hens. Or the time I made black and blue cornbread. I was making blue cornbread and the thermostat on the oven broke. Or Treebark in the snow. I had a jelly roll disintegrate while I was trying to roll it. There was no hope for it. I glued it together with raspberry jam, covered it in powdered sugar and called it treebark in the snow. People still ask me for that. I don’t think it can be reproduced/

I wasn’t very mobile, but I thought I could arrange things well enough that it wouldn’t matter. I prepped the meringue, put it in a pipping bag, started to pipe little stars and watched as incredibly sticky meringue oozed out of the top of the bag on to everything on the table. My cutting board. All the spoons and forks. The spice rack. Don’s computer. I had made meringue glue. Very effective.

So here are the quilts I made earlier this week before I glued everything in my kitchen to the piping bag.

It wasn’t a complete fail. Don liked the meringues enough to lick the beaters.

You can see it’s easier if I’m just allowed to quilt.

My leg is better today and the ice is gone, so I’m off to the studio. These quilts will be up on the site shortly.

The Machine Kit: Right Where You Need It

| ellenanneeddy

I have a tendency to lose things. I have four million screwdrivers somewhere. That does not mean that I can find them when I need them. Samuel Delany said that the coathangers turned into paper clips, just when they were needed as coathangers. I believe that, sort of.

I also don’t organize well. I am ashamed that any time I move, I have 100 boxes that are full of the same mix of threads, machine feet, odd tools, and fabric bits. I’m working towards a better sense of that. I can’t find anything because everything is everything.

Most of my machines come with a space for accessories. That’s nice. Except that they have to fit in all the accessories. Which means they’re kind of big and quite clunky. And they don’t fit on my sewing tables. They also make a tremendous crash if they fall off the table due to the vibration when I sew.

So I tend to have kits for different tasks and for the machines I use for those tasks.

I’m obsessed with these tin pencil boxes from Dollar Tree. They come in different patterns so I know which one I need for each machine.

What is in the box? What I need to clean a machine and the feet I use for the tasks I do with that machine. So each box has oil and a good cleaning brush, Each box has fresh 90-topstitching needles, And an appropriate darning foot.

The tools are not the same. The old 930 and the 770 both take different non-standard screwdrivers. The 770 is prone to thread caught in the take-up lever, so I have a tool in the 770 box for slicing through=thread tangles.

I have a box for my 99 and 66 Singers. They are a short shank machine that needs a foot that is completely different from the Berninas. They’re a straight stitch machine so they aren’t set up for cord binding. I use them mostly as piecing machines.

But I use the other machines for corded binding, so there is a regular pressure foot and a Bernina #3 foot for buttonholes along with the darning foot.

Am I more organized? Bless me, I hope.

How can you be more organized?

  • Analyze the tasks you do in your studio
  • Gather the tools you use for those tasks
  • Find a container and space where you can keep those.

I’m not going to live long enough to sort through a bag of all the sewing machine feet I own to find the one I need every time I stitch. If I have a kit set for each machine, I’ve eliminated the time I waste hunting what I need.

Next organization:

I need a place to put in tools for each machine: pins, clips, scissors, bobbins, hemostat, the feet and tools I don’t use all the time but I want available. I have these already, although I’ve moved machines enough that they’ve taken on the quality of “this is where I dumped stuff.”

Then maybe we organize cutting room. If you haven’t seen me in a while I’ll be under the table, trying to find the floor.

Next stop, will I actually try Swedish Death Cleaning? Probably not.

In Reflection: Creating an Image Reflected in Water

| ellenanneeddy

i need to start this post with a full disclosure. I am deeply dyslexic. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was teaching myself, but the b’s, p’s and t;’s periodically spin like tops for me. I’m not so hot on left and right either.

So when I wanted to add a reflected image into water on a quilt, it wasn’t an easy thing.

I start most quilts start with a good dyslexic exercise. I draw in pencil and trace a copy with a Sharpie. The drawing is ironed onto the back as a pattern and is backward. My thread colors top and bottom are the same, so I know where I’m going. This is charted water.

But a reflection isn’t exactly the same. I wanted to put a reflection of the birds in royal rails.The reflection in the water needs to be flipped vertically. But not horizontally. Add to the confusion that if you trace the shapes with Steam a Seam 2, the pieces will be cut flipped horizontally. I thought I could accommodate that by flipping it upside down. Nope. That did not work. I ended up with feet that pointed the wrong direction, Here’s the thing. By the time you take the drawing, trace out the pieces for the shadow in organza and put them on to Steam a Seam 2 to glue them, they’re backward again.

I never figured it out for this quilt. When I put in the water there wasn’t enough space for the reflection. It whipped me.

I can see it if I make a model. If I try to hold it in my head, my head explodes.

I finally made a little model. Both images are flipped horizontally. The bottom frog is flipped vertically.

I made several color layers from the drawing tracing out the frog, the turtle and the snail bits in separate color layers of red, dark green, and light green. I laid the turtle layer over the whole drawing, and placed the cut-out bits in. It was tedious, but it worked.

Now what is left is to place in water over and under the shadow image. And add waterlilies.

I feel like I have a new tool for my tool box! All kinds of reflections coming.