This has been a counter-productive week. My leg went out ( still not sure why), and I’ve had some low-grade flu. So my studio work didn’t happen. Instead, I worked a bit in my library.
When I married Don and moved, I stripped my library down. I have several libraries. One is for personal information and entertainment. Small kitchen library. And a pile of art books. Somehow that has continued to grow.
Where does our art come from? We’d like everything to be completely out of ourselves. I’m not sure that’s possible.
We have several illusions about art. We’d like to believe all art is original. But it’s not. Art comes from our response to other images. All art is in some way derivative. Different pieces of art hold a conversation over time. Art changes how other art is made.
We are told only artists are artists. That’s just wrong. Art is not unique to artists. It’s a part of our genome. It’s the ability to view our world differently. In our view of the world, we begin to change our world. when we work with those images, we change ourselves, and that changes the world. Just a little bit. It’s the creation of sense, beauty, and order. We have to silence the voice that says we are not artists. Because it’s the voice that tells us we can’t. Because it strips us of power that has always been our own.
So how do we kick start art? We need to feed our eyes and refuse to hamstring ourselves. What our senses bring gives us all kinds of inspiration.
But back to art being derivative: We work with the images that set us on fire, move our inners, pop out our own eyes or perhaps someone else’s. And there is never any reference like a book. The zoo is closed. The science program moves too fast. The web pictures are tiny. Your own library is a wide world portal that never closes; Not even at three am.
So I look for books with enough animal pictures to know how many toes a frog has and what angle the leg is at. I look for landscape books, garden books. pet books, pictorial archives, amazing art artists, and how-to techniques. And beautiful kid books.
I love my library. It fills my eyes. it fills my head. It fills my life.
I jus made myself bookplates for the Galesburg address. This is sneaky. I get to open every book, if nothing else but to put the plate in.
Take your inspiration where you find it, but build up inspiration where it waits for you, like treasure in heaven.
For some while, I’ve bound my quilts with a buttonhole binding. It’s a buttonhole with a cord inside. At first, I wanted to accommodate a leaf or a frog leg coming out of the piece. Then I wanted to bust out in all kinds of places.
I wrote this 4 years ago. It’s pretty good instruction but it leaves out something I thought was obvious at the time.
I started out as a traditional quilter. And for years I bound all my quilts with bias tape. But as my work became more organic, it felt terribly strange to put my work in a square box.
“The corded buttonhole is a standard technique from couture sewing. Translated from there to the quilt world, it gives us a way to finish both quilts and art clothing in a new way that’s literally out of the box. Instead of the square edges and gentle curves that are the limit of bias binding, we have the freedom to follow any shape. That means that the edge of our pieces is not defined by straight lines, but by their internal design. It also means a quilt can have an external shape that fills a wall in a much more exciting way. And because our binding is thread, we have the full range of polyester thread colors for our palette.
I prefer to do this on my Bernina because of the specific feet and the stitch quality. You can use a regular utility foot and a couching foot off another kind of machine.
We’ll be using two basic feet for our binding.
What largely counts is the thread escape on the bottom of the foot.
The #1 foot has a top groove we can use to couch down the cord. The #3 foot has a thread escape groove on the bottom for the zigzag stitching to pass through. The #3 foot is the older style buttonhole foot (without the electronic eye)that has exactly the right thread escape to accommodate the buttonhole binding
You’ll need
#3 Crochet cotton
A quilt/ or quilted object backed, quilted, and ready to bind
Polyester #30-40 weight embroidery thread the color of your choice
A#3 foot and a #1 foot
A Bernina
A rotary cutter and mat
Binding
We’ll bind our piece with a corded binding that’s a corded buttonhole all around the edge.
Preparing your quilt:
Stitch around the edge either with monofilament nylon or with a neutral embroidery thread so that all the layers are together
Using your rotary cutter, cleanly cut away all the extra bat and backing fabric, exactly the shape you want your quilt to be.
You don’t have to have a square. It can be any shape at all. To keep sharp 45 degree corners or points, you need to clip the tips off them.
Thread your machine top and bottom with a polyester embroidery thread that you want for the color of your binding. You can use rayon or metallic thread, but the breakage makes things so much more difficult.
Attaching the cord:
Set your machine on a zigzag stitch, with the needle placed one position over from full left. Your stitch length should be at between the button hole setting at a # 4 width.
Position your quilt so the stitch falls just over the right hand edge of your quilt.
Start your stitching somewhere in the lower edge, not on a corner or direct curve.
Zigzag your cording all around the edge.
When you come to the end, drop your feed dogs and make several stitches to anchor the cord.
Clip your threads and cord.
Tip: If you have a quilt that ruffles at the edge, you can pull the cord and gather in the ruffle. This will not solve severe distortion problems, but it will fix minor ones. You should pull the cord before you change directions or turn a corner.
Covering the cord:
Your second pass should cover your cord with smooth zigzag stitching.
You’ll find certain areas may not have been included in the stitching. This will give you a chance to address that.
Set your sewing machine for the widest stitch it will give, and the densest stitch length it can handle. Put your needle position to the far right.
Use your #3 foot, with the double channel thread escape.
Position your quilt so that the stitch to the right ends over the edge of your quilt
Start at a lower edge, not on a corner or a curve.
Stitch around the edge of your quilt.
When you come to the beginning, move your needle position to the far left, set onto a straight stitch and stitch in place to anchor the stitching.
Sometimes I get enough coverage on the second pass, but that’s rare. Usually it takes a third time around. Turn the piece over. If you still have wisps sticking up through the binding, trim them as best you can, and go around another time.
Corners, curves and points:
These all take a bit of finesse. Your standard button hole stitch isn’t set up to cover them. But you can get good coverage on them by rocking your stitch over them. As you’re stitching, you can pull back just a bit from the front to make sure your stitch line covers everything. Curves may also need that assist. For corners and particularly for points stitch up to them and turn the piece at slightly different angles as you go round the edge. You can put the needle down within the point and pivot and stitch several times until you have coverage.
Tips:
A clean cut edge to your piece is always easier to cover with stitching. Use your rotary cutter and make a nice solid cut line.
Use a new topstitching #90 needle for the best stitch and for less thread breakage.
Sewers Aid applied to the thread also helps with thread breakage.
Organic quilts don’t have to be stuck in a box. A corded buttonhole binding lets your quilt go over the edge.”
This was my original article, four years ago. Here’s the secret ingredient I didn’t think to factor in. Almost all of the shapes going off the edge. What I forgot to say, is that almost all of the items going over the edge have been embroidered to a fare-the-well. That means they have 2 other layers of stitch and tear and felt. They can literally stand up of their own accord.
It does make a difference. And I hate to be someone who will give you a recipe with something essential left out.
I am excited to make quilts that are exactly the shape they should be. None of that square for the sake of square stuff.
There are people who tell me they can plan a quilt. They make drawings. They decide what they’re going to do. And that’s what they do.
Personally, I’m in awe. I can design until I’m blue. Somewhere in the middle, the quilt lets me know what it needs. And I need to follow that down whatever road it leads me down.
I fell in love with this mockingbird image. But it’s off my map a bit. Once I got it embroidered, I realized it was strictly a desert bird.
I don’t do desserts. I’m a water creature. I live in moonlight and water. But this is a bird full of sun and fire.
So I went looking for a background. I happened to have some purple behind the piece of orange I put up. And it had the bright green aura of cactus in it. The purple added a night and day element.
I needed to decide on plants. If I were to do anything it had to be cactus.
You can tell the fact that I don’t think in terms of deserts when I tell you I had nothing to make cactus and desert from. I had to dye more greens.
Which is when I found these wonderful pictures of owls in cactus.
So now I’m making owl heads. I need to do them before I make the cactus so I can make holes and fit them in.
One decision leads to another. I can’t make one until I’ve made that. Then new questions get asked and new things get included. If I think I’m in charge, I’m delusional.
But I believe in my art. I believe in what it demands. I am its servant. And I am willing to listen to what it would like me to do next.
This week I painted a batch of lace and organza. I love using these soft laces because they offer texture and shifting color as another overlay on the surface.
These are not especially elegant laces. The organza is plain poly organza. I often find them in rummage sales. I hit the jackpot at some point when I bought a pile of remanents from a wedding seamstress.
Painting lace is easy. I use acrylic paints from Walmart or Joann’s and mix them with fabric media (available at Amazon) to make the hand of the fabric better. Mix in a little extra water until the paint is the consistency of cream, and paint the lace with sponge brushes. It’s a lovely, messy wildly colored afternoon. You let it dry completely and iron it on a synthetic heat setting.
I’ve heard a lot of people argue for the real thing. Silk organza. Real lace. I love those things too, but it’s not about fiber content. It’s about color, transparency, translucency, and texture. And it’s about whether they work well under the needle and as applique. It helps to know the content so you don’t burn it under the iron.
There’s a short story by Henry James called The Real Thing. It’s about an artist who has a noble couple offer themselves as models. They argue that they are the real thing and that they will add accuracy to his work as his models. But the truth is, he finds the woman who is his ordinary model from a humble and somewhat criminal life could be anything: a gypsy, a fairy, a queen, a courtesan, or a saint. And since she can be anything, she makes his artwork ultimately real.
Painted lace is a test tube baby, made of nylon and polyester. But it creates a wonderful surface overlay. And I really don’t care how real it is.
So, if you know of anyone who is rehoming white poly lace and organza, let me know. I finally used up my stash.
I saw my new cardiologist yesterday. Nothing has really changed. I still have a moderate leaky valve. I still have an aneurysm. I still have a blocked artery.
But none of them are actively causing me pain or difficulty. None of them are acute or active. They’re just there. And they’re not quite bad enough for surgery.
So for the moment, I’m off the hook. They’ll monitor. I shouldn’t lift anything heavy or strain, or lean over very much. That’s a very moderate group of limits, considering. I’m afraid I can’t help anyone move at this time.
Is it coming someday? Inevitably, I suppose. But not today. Today we make quilts!
And a Dutch baby for breakfast.
Thank you for your care, your prayers, your concern and your love. You’ve always held me up. I hope I can always do that for you in return.
I’m always tickled when I find a new use for an old toy.
I remember when the Clover Mini Irons came out. I was underwhelmed. There are easier ways to press a seam without heat. I know I had one. I can’t remember where it went.
I was working on a background for my ibis. I wanted clouds and a pond seen from above. These are atmospheric elements, mostly made from sheers and lace.
I like working on my photo wall. I can put things up and see them vertically. There is a distortion if you’re designing on a flat piece if it’s over a certain size. I use Steam a Seam 2 which allows me to reposition pieces until I’ve ironed.
But there is this perilous part where I go to move the piece from the wall to the iron. That walk down the hall is papered with scraps of fabric, properly placed on my piece that have fluttered down as I carried it through. It’s an unhappy moment. When I get it down to the ironing table, everything has to be placed again.
As an experiment, I got this mini iron, in the hopes that it could be ironed just a little.
Steam a Seam 2 can be tacked on just with the heat of your hand, and it can also be ironed on permanently with a hot iron.]
I had some safety concerns, but we figured them out pretty quickly. This is an old iron shoe that I used to place the iron on. It’s heatproof, and even when the iron rolls (which it does) it still is on a non-flammable surface.
I was also concerned about burning my Blue Dow wall. It is highly flammable. I was happy to find the shoe did not get hot enough to affect it.
I can also clean the iron shoe with iron cleaner and the Teflon Sheet with a No Stick Scotch-Bright Scrubby. The blue one if for no-stick pans, and won’t harm the pressing cloth
I was surprisingly pleased with the result. When I went to move my piece, it was stuck enough to stay in place. Definitely, I’ll use this little iron again.
I spent yesterday in a whirlwind of classroom at the Peoria Art Guild. The Guild supports a number of artists in so many ways. But one of the things they do each year is give a handful of teens an art immersion experience, with all kinds of working art and artists.
It was a privilege. It made me wonder. These kids are 14-17, maybe. But they’re already there. They know they’re doing art and they are unabashed about it. And what they could learn in technique is more than made up for by their passion, their courage, and their already formed vision. They spent 5 hours building images in sheers and hand dye. That may have been new to them. But the creative spark is something they are already solidly committed to. It was a delight to see them work. I’ll be back in two weeks and we’ll do the stitching part of it.
When does that switch happen? I run into a lot of people who tell me they aren’t artists. Usually, that’s because they’re more verbal than visual. If you talk with them they can explain their images and the concepts in a way that brims with art.
Perhaps the problem is how do we define art?. If it has to be set in a mold, like figure drawing, or landscapes, that’s a pretty big limit on a much wider world.
But if art is, vision out of chaos., order out of disaster, and the creation of beauty and sense in the retelling of ourselves., that may be where my definition hovers. Art is life. The way we live creates our own beauty, our own songs, soothes our worst fears, and helps us to see ourselves in a different mirror that focuses on our strengths and beauty, instead of our failures and misgivings.
Art simply flows out of that. The things we produce our wonderful. But they are largely the byproduct of the process of restructuring who we are through our imagery. These kids already have it. I believe we all do, from birth.
ThePeoria Art Guild is a haven for artists and people who love and live art. You’ll find it at
It’s always nice to find a new use for an old tool. I’ve loved oil paint sticks for years. I use them for fabric rubbings and find them an exciting way to design.
I’d pulled some out for a friend who had come to the studio for a visit. They were still on my table, and as I went to put them away, I thought about lace and organza.
painted organza
I’ve painted lace before. Almost all the lace I’ve worked with has been polyester or nylon, so you had to paint it with acrylic paint, the kind that comes in little bottles at Joann’s and Walmart. You mix the paint with water and with fiber medium. Then you can paint it with sponge brushes. The effect is a soft spread of colors with a kind of plastic-like hand, that you can iron, and iron on things.
It’s pretty. But it’s always pastel. You know how I feel about pastels. Yes, there’s a reason for them. I still have to be talked into it.
So I thought about a white piece of lace I bought a while back at a garage sale, and painted bits of it with oil paint stick.
Tips for Working with Oil Paint Stick
Use a sheet of freezer paper to protect your table,.
Peel off the skin on the paint stick with a potato peeler.
Peeling along the long side of the paint stick gives a wider brush stroke.
They can be rubbed against a surface and blended with each other.
The differences are stunning. Both are cool, but in very different ways.
Oil Paint Stick
Has incredible bright color
Won’t spill
Uses up quite a bit of paint for one piece
Takes time to dry
Doesn’t need brushes
Cleans up with Goop or Go Jo
Only paints on one sided
Sets with a hot iron
Acrylic Painted Lace
Paints up with sponge brushes
Drip dries within a couple hours.
Sets with a hot iron.
Pastel to moderate color
Will I use them both. Of course! I love using sheers, and colored sheers give me a way to shift the color of my quilt surface. Having a bright option instead of just a pastel one is a big present under the tree.
Hand dye with oil paint stick lace overlay
I’m working on an ibis that needs a small pond from above and some clouds. New shaded grey/blue/beige laces might be what that needs. I love new toys!
This has been a tough week. I couldn’t get in to the studio regularly. My cardiac surgeon called to tell me he’s leaving his practice, and referring me to another doctor. And I had a friend die.
Trish Williams was an excellent fiber artist, a skilled quilter, and an astonishing story teller. She covered the black experience in her quilts in a way that drew you in and held you there, helped you to understand what had happened and how it felt. I was privileged to know her through Dana Baldwin and through the Peoria Art Guild. She died this week. I will never forget her work. I will never forget her.
What do we leave behind as artists? We leave a pile of art behind. Pictures, photos, quilts, it really doesn’t matter what the media is. You might think bei ng an artist is about artwork. I don’t really think it is. I think it’s about expressing what we see, our vision. We take what we see, we work with the images to retell our stories, to reinvent ourselves. And as we reinvent ourselves, sometimes, if you’re lucky, good or wise, sometimes we shift the world.
We also collect skills. Build new technology. Recover old technology. Open new doors. Pry open old ones gone and past. Take our own journies. Help eachother on their ways. Pass on what we know, about art, about stories about life. But it’s all in the end, a retelling of who we are, what we’ve seen and what we need.The artwork is a byproduct from the process.
Trish did all of that. You can see some of her magnificent work on her blog at https://trishwilliamshandworks.blogspot.com/. I figure God will put her in charge of directing sunsets, and I look forward to seeing her work.
