One of the reasons I like working larger is that I get to play with the details. Smaller images sometimes only need a line of stitching to define things. Larger images allow me to play with color and texture. And the space to make the details count.
There are a couple of defining factors. Are the legs and feet segmented? A solid line of black stitching defines that.
These feet were stitched with progressive colors in garnet stitch, small circles intertwined together.
Does the stitching flow into itself? These have simpler feet and legs with segments.
Does it have patterned stitching? These were stitched in u-shaped scales.
Garnet stitch textures these feet with quieter tones.
Of course, the angle of the legs creates the movement of the bird.
And you can cheat by putting the feet in water.
Different textures, different treatments make the kind of details that define the piece.
There’s no help for it. If you are shading a pink bird, you’ll need to use pastels at some point. I’m not a fan. But you don’t get to throw out a section on the color wheel. Eventually, you’ll need all the values: tones, jewels, and pastels. Tones and jewels. Yes! Pastels. not that much.
Let me break down the color scheme for you.
There are six color zones, in the feathers of this bird, and then a zone for the neck and thighs, the feet, the head and the bill.
There are two progressive color themes going on. The pink under body and feathers, and the green overstitching. Both progress from dark to light.
Where did it go wrong? I chose the wrong yellow.
White objects are rarely pure white, unless you want a posterized deco look. They’re made up of other colors pale enough to be perceived as white. The bird itself is pink. I pulled in bits of lavender and yellow to blend it and to create a shadowed projection. I chose the wrong yellow. If you look at the top feather, you can see a strip of yellow that’s pretty loud.
You know that kind of Easterbunny pastel. Yellow, pink, blue, purple, and maybe green. It’s only appealing if you’re under the age of five. It missed here. I stitched some cream and natural white thread all over it.
Then I added the overstitching. The overstitching takes center stage, and the yellower bits back off. I think I’ve saved it. It also browns out the pinks a bit. They’re all there, but quieter for the green.
What should I have done? I should have lined up that yellow in a row with the other colors and taken a black and white picture of it. I would have known right there. But I’m happy with it now.
I’m ready for the next step, which is the background. And I think it needs yellow fish and birds.
I’ve always joked that it didn’t matter that I couldn’t do straight lines because I really didn’t want to. I tend to justify my limits a bit. I do know better.
I left behind piecing when I was a beginning quilter, because I was much more interested in quilting in creatures than following straight lines. I was also rotten at straight lines. We are defined not so much by what we take up as by what we discard.
So after years of beautiful curves and free motion ecstacies, I find myself if situations where I really do want to make a straight line. At least sometimes.
It all started with a ceiling tile. I have a ceiling tile that rubs out like prairie grass. I love it. It gives the movement of grass without a heavy shape. But the lines are basically straight.
I’ve stitched them with just my darning foot, to mixed results. I couldn’t follow the lines as well as I liked. They’re pretty, and I love the grass stems, but I wanted them to be less sloppy.
I was browsing through some videos where I found one of Leah Day using a ruler and a darning foot together. I’m quite a fan of hers. She has done a lot of good innovation with stippling and texture. She showed how to quilt with a darning foot and a ruler.
I know it’s a long-arm quilter thing, but I had never tried it. There was a special foot involved and some very pricey rulers, so I decided to try to do it on the cheap.
Berninas aren’t either really short or long shank machines. They’re a whole other system. But I do have an adapter for feet that works pretty well. I ended up ordering a short shank darning foot and a five inch omnigrid square.
The foot with the adapter was an epic fail. I could put the foot on the adapter, but it wouldn’t make a proper stitch without breaking needles.
I went through my old Bernina feet and found one that came with a really old machine. It was a darning foot with a raised lip. It worked. Clearly there’s a learning curve.
Would it have been easier to buy a new foot? I’m sure. But it was also pricey, Next time the ship comes in, I’ll buy one.
Will I do this more? There are times when a straight line is just what you need. Probably no way out.
So we have a win for old weird Bernina feet and ingenuity. I’m always pleased with new possibilities. It’s like someone slipped a new toy in my tool box. My reeds are everything I could ask for. They’re almost straight.
I wish I were someone who could take a design and execute it. I can try. It’s a case of man proposing, and God laughing. Instead, a series of decisions are to be made at each point. Each decision points to the next.
One of the most useful things I do in a class is to start a piece from scratch. It’s not like there is a direct list of what you do next. But there are some decisions to be made. It helps to have a plan.
Here is the list of things I need to decide for each piece.
Background-The hand dye creates the light and the atmosphere for the piece. It usually is the first choice. Does it have a sunspot? A pool? A field of flowers within it? It dictates almost everything, especially the lighting in a piece.
Major Images-These are the main focus. I draw them in Totally Stable, backwards. They iron on to the back of the piece and remain inside the piece as a pattern.
Atmospherics-Water, light, smoke clouds, and sometimes leaves and flowers are atmospherics. They are usually made of commercial sheers, handpainted lace, and dyed cheesecloth. They make a translucent presence in the piece.
Details/pathway-These are smaller embroideries, or stones, or leaves that can be used to create a visual pathway through the surface.
Texturizing the surface/stippling- after all that embroidery, the rest of the piece needs to be integrated. The stippling over the surface can pulls the piece together.
There are no right or wrong answers. There are simply decisions. Each defines the piece. What I choose not to do also shapes the definition. I’m OK with that. I’ve learned that each decision I reject can be featured in the next piece. Or the one after that. I’m not making one perfect piece of art. I’m creating a body of art that explores the limits and range of my techniques and my skills.
This piece, like most of them, started with a piece of fabric and the idea of herons. I dye a number of pieces of fabric as cenotes, wells of color. Some times the cenotes make a light source, but this piece made a wonderful pond.
The birds started as whistling herons. But at a certain point, they were indistinguishable from the Louisiana Blues. So I did them as blue herons. It’s important to finish the major embroideries first because they shrink. You don’t know how they’ll fit in until they’re embroidered and cut out.
The atmospherics for this piece are water and grass. The grass is an oil paint stick rubbing of a ceiling tile. The water is accentuated with c-shapes of hand painted and commercial lace. Then I put in rocks to anchor the pond and direct the eye.
I decided on damsel flies and grasshoppers, as pathway elements. They did not work the way I had hoped. The damsel flies fit in, but I’m not sure of the grasshoppers. I’ll have to finish them to be sure.
Finally, I wanted seedlings growing up through the water. I made big beautiful bold seedlings the size of God’s underpants. Again, not the best choice. I scaled that down and it was much more effective, although I might want bigger ones at the bottom.
This piece is pinned in position. I’ll be stitching soon. But most of the decisions are made, step by step, before it’s stitched down.
I’m always looking for a better way to do something. Easier. More visible. More user-friendly. Tech changes as we go along, partially because we get smarter about what we do, partially because we learn from others, and partially because the materials, thread, and stabilizers change and we change with them.
If change isn’t a four-letter word, it should be. It’s not easy or fun to develop new ways to do things. But if we are going forward on an artistic path, it’s inevitable.
Except when it’s not.
I developed using free-motion embroidered appliques as an anti-pucker technique. First I did it only with quite large objects. Over the last couple of years that has developed into what I call component quilting, where almost all of my images are done separately on a sandwich of hand-dye, felt and Stitch nTear, and then cut out. I apply them to the quilt surface only when they are completely embroidered.
What does that do technically?
It diminishes the puckering around heavy embroidery by cutting it away
It creates a strong visual image that pops off the quilt surface.
It creates a larger outline than you might want for a smaller image.
It allows you to use a zigzag stitch for quicker coloring.
What did I use to do? I stitched my images directly into the quilt sandwich. It was where I started as a quilter. First I used to stitch images into the quilting. Then I began to stitch with specialty thread so those images would show up better. It was at least 15 years before I began to stitch the images separately.
What does that do?
It requires either straight stitch or very narrow zigzag because of the puckering
It allowes the background to show throught the embroidery, so that it blends in more.
It can be seen on the back (which is really cool if you embroider directly into the quilt sandwich
It puckers up anyway, but less than it would with zigzag
I’ve pretty much stopped using direct image stitching. This time I went back to it strictly for the aesthetics. I wanted fish that did not stand out as much as the frog. Doing component embroidery on the frog and direct embroidery on the fish makes them different in appearance and creates a visual sort where your eye lets you know they are different. I wanted the frog half out of the water and the fish firmly in the water.The fish were outlined in a narrow black zigzag, and then stitched straight stitch from the back with metallic thread in the bobbin.
Did it work that way? I’m still figuring that out. The fish are quieter than the frog and seem part of the water. I’m not sure how I feel about the look.
I do know that I can’tafford to throw away technique. Some things just work differently. Having those options is holy.
Frog River is now available for sale at my Etsy Shop.
I started a new quilt this week. like most quilts, it started with an incredible piece of fabric.
It’s been a while since I’ve dyed, so I’m down to the most fabulous, I’m scared to use it wrong fabric, and the stuff I really don’t care about.
This piece took time to figure out because it’s only a half yard. Sometimes that’s plenty of space. Sometimes it’s not.
but it made such a good pond. All that yummy blue purple against yellow.
I wanted herons, and I found a sketch of herons I used for my information.
Unfortunately, when I looked up the specifics, it was a whistling heron.
In case that sounds unfamiliar to you, you’re not alone. A whistling heron is from eastern Asia.
Is it different especially from other herons? Not so much. Heron head, heron wings, heron feathers. But yellow. The body is yellow.
I think you can see my problem. A yellow heron is going to show up on this like a yetti in a snow storm.
OK. How real do I have to be? What do I want to accomplish with this piece? Am I copying life precisely? Am I playing with interesting shapes or colors? How tied am I to “The Real Thing.”
Henry James wrote a story called “The Real Thing.” It was about an artist who had a reduced gentleman and lady offer themselves as models to him. That had to be a pretty harsh come down in the world for them.
They said they were the real thing, but in truth, they were only that one real thing. He found the girl who could be a gypsy, madonna, dance, lady and probably was a lady of the night, a much better model because she could be anything with his imagination.
Modern art launched right around the beginnings of photography. There’s a reason for that. Up until then, the goal was to come closer and closer to real. Suddenly, you could have a completely real image at the click of a button. An artist can’t really compete with that. So different things have to happen.
So where do we go if we’re not more and more “real?” We start exploring, shape, light, color and texture. We start to think what if. We start to let the art define itself. We find it defines us in the process. That’s a whole lot more scary than real.
But worth it.
I decided these herons could just be herons. And little blue herons are the perfect color behind all that lovely lemon yellow.
So these birds can be blue and shine in their yellow, not so realistic but perhaps symbolic, world. That there are pools of water, even in strict drought. That we find them even under extreme conditions and can thrive past the hardships. That we are not completely defined by other people’s real.
You’ll find a free copy of Henry James story, The Real Thing, here if you want to read it. It’s an interesting thing for artists to think about. Why are we painting, sewing, drawing, and create? What do we build in doing that? What reality do we create? Because as artists, that’s our job.
You know I go crazy over oil paint stick rubbing. My first tries with rubbings were not successful. But at this point, I use them regularly to texturize backgrounds. Mostly I use commercial rubbing plates. They’re pretty and flexible. But they’re not very big. The technique lends itself to smaller pieces. They’re fun. But covering a half yard of fabric with a 6″ square design takes forever
This was a leftover piece for it. I love it but it’s just too small. And I wanted a piece that would give me perspective on the river I wanted to build for my frog river.
I love this background. I found I had a leftover frog and dragonfly, and they suited each other quite well. But the fabric didn’t feel enough like a river. It needed water and rocks.
. Unfortunately, I haven’t found any rock rubbing plates.That just meant I wasn’t looking in the right place. Lowes has some rock backsplash tile I’d purchased. I love the texture.
Here’s the extra rock tiles I found. They are backsplash tiles from Lowes. They are on a thread mesh, but they are real rocks.
Rivers are often defined by the pebbles at the bottom. So I decided to build my river with some rock rubbings.
So I went back to Lowes. In the backsplash section, I found a collection of rock tiles in different sizes.
I also picked some rubbing plates that make good river foliage.
I drew some chalk lines to show me where to put the river. Then I began with the smallest rock tile
I went to the larger rocks landing at the bottom. Then I rubbed blue and purple ripples through the river area.
This is subtle. But I do like it. Here the frog and the dragonfly fit into the river and sky. I’m planning on minnows and cat tails along the edges.
I finished off the composition with water patterns over the rocks. Then I added a layer of blue and green sheers for that wet look. I can hear the water running
What’s the take away? I can build depth into my piece by making a path that starts near me and gets smaller as it retreats. I also can find stones and tiles that pass as rubbing stones at any good hardware store. And I can make a river out of a paint stick, a backsplash of rocks, and a water rubbing plate on top of them. That’s a lot to ask of a piece of fabric and some paint. But we all know that oil paint stick-rubbed fabric is a magic of its own.
Check out this earlier blog on working with oil paint sticks if you’d like a tutorial on using paint sticks.
I love roses. I no longer have them in my garden but they often fill my quilts. I was working on a batch of roses for a quilt that’s out of series of brambles over old walls. The backgrounds are oil paint stick rubbings with blackberries or roses growing over them. It;s based on a memory of a french fairy tale where there was an ornately carved wall with roses growing over it. The movie Ever After (a cinderella retelling) has a scene with a wall like that.
This time I’ve been working with a drawing of a red wing blackbird, but the black was just too boring. So we went blue instead. It worked with the rubbed background.
These roses are abstract. They’re made from spiral cuts of sheer fabrics, intertwined and stitched free motion. I’ve done them before. Abstraction is about taking one or several parts of an image and letting them represent the whole. But stitching the points felt so good. I tried to figure out why. It’s not exactly what a rose looks like, but it has the spiral form of the petals. The spiral reminds us of the structure of roses. Where do the points come in? Some roses have folded petals that look like points.
Abstract work is hard for me. I’m not an accurate person by nature, but it takes me a while to simplify something enough to abstract it. I’ve done it from time to time, but it’s not natural for me. But the point to the roses, was all the points.
I wanted white roses, but you can’t have just white. Without color there are no shadows. I went with a pallet of pale blues, lilac, aqua, cream, grey, and green. The white fabric spirals make the image white and the threads make the shading. As I was working stitching the roses, I noticed I really liked putting points on the edges. It made them much more rose like.
Then it occurred to me. The points were an echo of the thorns of the rose.
When I had my Porter garden, I came to love my roses not only for their scent or their loveliness. Roses are aggressive. They are, as a species, 30 million years old. They are lovely scented thorned privacy. And I thought my birds might need a little privacy.
These arr partially stitched down. I hope to finish them this week.
Here’s the rest of that series. I love the idea of walls covered with rose vines.
Component quilting lets me streamline my quilting. I have two quilts I’m working on that will need some bugs. Why?
Both of these pieces are going to need some help building a pathway. Bugs are a great way to do that. They flitter across the surface and they create movement. But these need a significant number of bugs. It’s just easier to make a batch. I think ended up making 35 in all.
I did damsel flies, moths, and small white butterflies for the frog/turtle quilt.
For the bluebird quilt, I wanted larger white butterflies.
This batch of bugs was a color lesson for me. Normally I ignore gold and silver thread. When there’s purple and green metallic thread, why would I use gold or silver.
All of the bug bodies are from Madeira FS2/20 thread. The black core thread really looks like beading up close.
I tried the opalescent white as a butterfly wing. I was underwhelmed. I really don’t like the pink quality.
I needed the white that silver brings. I tried going over it with silver afterwards. It was not improved.
Opalescent white under silver does a nice bright white. For those birds, nothing else will do.
I wanted a softer quality for the moths and the swamp. So they were done from polyester threads.
For the damselle flies I needed a solid carapace and see-through wings. The iridescent thread did the wings nicely, even with the pink cast.
Different threads offer really big differences in the result. In this case, it keeps the bugs separate from each other and from the other elements in the quilt.
Size is a limit with component quilting. Things under an inch and a half are hard to keep crisp and have too heavy an outline when they’re applied. But for most elements, it allows me to choose where to put what. Choice is good.
