Art Piece

Springing into a new web site

| ellenanneeddy

Spring is here. I can tell by the gale like winds and the sea of mud puddles. I’m only hoping the radishes I planted don’t get fooled and come up too soon.

Along with the spring, I have two new series of quilts I’ve been working on all year showcased. The Marsh Heron quilts are herons and water birds in swamp lands. I’ve always loved herons, and I’ve really played with them here. The Bird Feeder Series is about how a garden naturally feeds birds with the flowers within it. I’ve always understood that a garden isn’t all about people. It’s about every one who uses it. Particularly the birds. There are 11 new large quilts that I am so proud of. See if you can find them.

So it seemed time to freshen up my web site. I’m not hopeless with tech, but wordpress has pretty much kicked me around the room in an effort on my part to understand what’s under the hood. I’ve been so frustrated with showing off quilts easily and well. And people have told me they couldn’t find them easily. I think this time we have it licked. I put in a new theme and spent a week making sure all the links clicked through.

So, I ask you if you would please visit the new portfolio section of my page, and let me know if it works for you. It should lead you to a gallery of quilts, where you can click on any of them and get the information page. Hopefully it will be much easier for you to see all the quilts, without having to hunt for them through the blogs.

And there are some great new quilts to see.

In celebration of that, I’m putting the quilts on 20% off sale. If you click through the Etsy button you’ll find the sale price. If you are a quilt owner, and you would like to trade up a quilt you own for a different piece, let me know. You always have trade up rights.

Please let me know if this site works better for you. Thanks!

Ellen

Into White: The Search for White Thread Painting

| ellenanneeddy

Some things are an experiment. Some things are a quest. Some things are like the holy grail and you keep searching for them interminably.

White is one of those things. When you’re working with thread painting, the easy answer is many shades of grey and then white, or many shades of beige and then white. Both are incredibly boring.

“Why couldn’t you just make it white?“ I hear you say. You could. If you want it to shine out stronger than any other element in the quilt and you don’t care about dimension, you could. Pure white can be like an out of place spotlight in a quilt.

So the quest is, what mix of colors, greys and beiges will make a white that will have good depth, cast and drama. And look like it’s white.

In that quest, I’ve done a step by step photo study on this bird, in hopes to study it.

I’ve talked about zoning and shading before so I won’t flog that in this blog. “Rethinking White” is a post about shading white applique flowers. It’s a bit different than totally building color in thread. Because it’s built on sheers instead of strictly thread. But you may find that a useful difference.

Dimension is made by arranging colors from either dark to light or light to dark. It builds the illusion of shape. The progression of colors creates shade and shadow.

Here is my thread range I chose. It’s a mix of blues, purples, greens greys and beige, laid out dark to light.

I’ve put together some process shots to help explain.

Head Shots

Dimension comes from having a dark, medium and light area in each color zone in your piece. If you can establish dark, medium and light, you can make depth, something that isn’t by nature flat. Then for interest’s sake I added a shocker and a shader color to spark it. Of course the beak and the eye bring it to life.

Changing Cast

The two things you are building are cast and dimension. Cast is the color under the color. Most colors either lead towards the sun or the shade. You get the clearest colors by using only sun or shade colors in an embroidery.

But sometimes clear color isn’t the goal. If you want to come to a neutral shade, you mix both. And try not to go too far from the center. It makes a fabulous blended shade, but it’s hard to accomplish.

The cast on the under feathers was more yellow than the rest of the bird. An over stitched layer of a bluer grey pulls the color closer to center.

White doesn’t have to be boring. Or grey, or beige. With a little thinking and a close eye we can create a blended white with dimension.

The Wrong Bird: Not Settling

| ellenanneeddy

Sometimes it just doesn’t work. most of the time I can see it in my head. Except when I can’t tell until I get it up on the wall.

I was a bit unsure when I drew the bird. But he had great movement. I stitched it out anyway.

Two things happened. It shrank and that was a real problem. How much? I had a notion so I measured. Roughly 8.9 %. Doesn’t sound like much but it didn’t help. I’d used a yellow thread in the mix that didn’t make me happy. And I hated his legs. They just didn’t quite work.

But honestly it was just the wrong bird. Much happier with this drawing. Ignore the lines with squiggles. They are off. It will have to be drawn in reverse for the picture.

Years ago in college I made a stone wear red queen as a portrait of my mother. Trust me. It was appropriate. It blew up in the kiln.

Stubborn is just tenacious in a different dress. I built again and this time it survived the firing. Of course they put all my work after that in the firings where a woman did work that always blew up.

So I have an extra bird I don’t quite know where it goes. And a bird I love drawn ready to go. Not a big problem as these things go.

Sometimes it makes sense to settle. Sometimes it costs your heart and soul. I hope not to get in too big a hurry to hear myself. Or to work until it’s right.

Update:

Here is where that bird finished up. He’s so much better sized for these fish.

This is what happened with the second bird drawing. Boy, am I glad I refused to settle.

Coneflowers in the Snow: Making Beautiful Blooms

| ellenanneeddy
Coneflowers

In all this snow I’m thinking of flowers. It’s just that time of year. If I can’t have flowers outside I’m going to make them inside.

I had this piece of fabric dyed as a Cenote, a well of color. On its side it reminded me of the center of a coneflower.

Sheers making up the flower

So I made coneflowers. Not just pink. Pink, magenta, and burgundy. I used lightweight felt and stitch and tear as a stabilizer.

I found a burnout fabric with gold dots, perfect for the center.

The threads define the final colors. Greens and oranges too. Nothing is pure pink.

Bird feeder 2

The hummingbirds were delighted to be invited to lunch. It may be snowing outside, but my inside garden is beautiful.

The Importance of Backing Up: Looking before You Leap

| ellenanneeddy

There’s nothing like being on a roll with a piece. You’re sewing away. You have one more bit to do, or maybe three or maybe five. It’s a bit questionable but you push through because it’s so good to be done.

By now I should be prescient about that. That’s a ledge with a chasm right by it. And I should know I’m likely to fall. I did that this week.

three fish

I had that green heron quilt ready to go. Got the heron on. Looked at the fish and decided I needed an odd number. Three was a bit empty. So I decided on five.

five fish

Did I look? Actually I did. Did I think? Perhaps that’s the problem. My brain knows that odd numbers work better than even ones. My eye knew the fifth fish just didn’t fit in. I listened to my brain. Not so smart.

Theories don’t always work. If your eye tells you it’s wrong, then it’s wrong. Had I listened I would have saved myself three hours with a mustache trimmer and seam ripper. And a ruined fish.

Design is important. So is color. So is drawing. But in the end, it’s how the piece balances and flows when it’s all done. This is the part you can foul up with everything else right. And the answer is simple. You need to look at it.

Not just put it up and see. Put it where you can really analyze whether it balances and flows and whether there’s stuff.

I’m bad at this. That moment when I get that urge to finish…. it gets me every time I follow it.

So how do we look at a quilt differently?

Old school is to just back away far enough from it to see it. It’s not enough to see it laid on the table. You need to hang it to see it. I used to hang really large pieces off the porch and walked down the alley to really see it.

I’ve also used a a wide angle viewer. These let you view a big quilt in a small space. They are very valuable.

Another old school method is a ruby beholder, or a color evaluator. It’s a red or green piece of plastic where you can see the values in your quilt as opposed to the colors. It’s a huge help.

All of that steps back to a digital camera. And yes, your cell phone will probably do that.

Just get far enough back to photo the whole piece. And then, changed the photo to black and white. You can see the movement, whether something needs to be put over slightly to one side. Whether you’ve just got a hole or it’s too cluttered. Whether something disappears. It will also show you if you’ve got a value problem.

My bird is a bit subtle here. But I don’t think I mind that. He’s hunting after all, so he needs to be.

Leaves in place

It’s always better to do that before you sew things down. You would think I would learn. Experience is the best teacher, and some fools will have no other.

Speed Demon Sewing: How Fast Do You Sew?

| ellenanneeddy

Every time I demo, I have someone ask if I really sew that fast. Yes. Yes I do.

But not on everything. It depends largely on the kind of sewing you’re doing.

I’ve always said there were two sewing speeds: straight and zigzag. Why? Because different techniques work better with different speeds.

Straight stitching is better at a medium speed. both foot pedal and hands. Too fast you lose control. Too slow you start wobbling. That would be for stippling, bobbin work, and line drawing.

Zigzag stitching is different, The faster you can sew with a zigzag stitch, the better you can fill in the space. It’s possible to go so fast you go over the edge or over your thumb. But barring that, machine speed is your friend , Now your hands are a whole different thing. They move at a crawl, holding hoop to slide it extra slowly, again so you can fill everything in well.

I don’t every really sew slowly. It makes me crazy. Particularly for the zigzag stitch. It just takes so long. You also lose those smooth lines sewing slowly.

Recently I bought a Bernina 790. It’s a proper speed demon, I’ve been working on these larger zigzag appliques and I realized something. They used to take me a lot more time. I’ve been cutting 2-4 days off the embroidery time with a faster machine.

It makes sense. I just hadn’t thought that way. The faster you sew the faster you’re done. I hadn’t realized what a difference that machine was making.

My dad used to say if there was a job that took to long, was too hard or too nasty, you had the wrong tool. The right tool could change all of that. I still haven’t trotted that machine out for bobbin work. I’ve been too busy doing zigzag embroidered appliques to get there.

On of the features of the new machine is that it counts stitches. It tells me I put three million stitches in since October. I think you can see how that happened. I did these fourth birds over the last the last month

What does that mean for you? Find the best machine you can to do the work you want to do. You can work hard. You can work smart. And you can let your machine help. That doesn’t mean the most expensive machine. Try machines out with what you want to do. You’ll know the difference. The right machine makes it so much easier.

When should you slow down sewing? Mostly when you loose control of your stitch or when you start breaking thread in a way that makes you crazy. Other than that, I’d blaze away.

Drawing on Distortion: Give it a Kiss, Because It’s Going to Pucker Up

| ellenanneeddy

One of the issues with free motion embroidery is that it always puckers up. You always have some distortion. The worst is that the distortion is uneven and unpredictable. Sometimes it pulls the piece out of shape or makes it unrecognizable. Free motion objects take a lot of time. It’s heart breaking to have them distort past usability. It’s best to adjust for that from the start.

There’s some time honored ways to deal with distortion. First make the embroidery off the surface of the quilt. It can be applied afterwards with minimal distortion. I will be talking about separate embroideries in this article, although the information works for both off and on the quilt surface.

Stabilizers help a lot. Small embroideries under 2″ use three stabilizers all together. The drawing itself is on Totally Stable. It’s a lightweight stabilizer that irons on and is removeable. Stitch and Tear is the next layer. It’s a stiff tear away Pellon. Then I use a layer of acrylic felt that absorbs much of the stitching. I prefer the thinner versions. I attach the stitch and tear and felt with 505 spray. For anything larger, I use a layer of hand dyed fabric as the top layer.

Do remember that the drawing on the back will face the opposite side on the front. I know, I know. Think of it as looking through a slide backwards.

Now it gets confusing. My drawing layer is on the back. I’m going to turn it upside down to stitch. I’m not going to call them top and bottom. The sandwich has a front and the back. For stitching purposes the front is on the bottom and the back is on top. Got it?

I am using two hoops. Sharon Schamber’s red weighted halo hoop is my very favorite. It has a weighted core and a rubber coating. It grips and the weight supplies support.

Now it’s all up to the drawing. We can’t accurately predict the distortion but we can take some good guesses. To do that we need to look at the zigzag stitch

The zigzag stitch pulls across the stitch. The more layers of stitching, the more distortion. For a larger piece, you need to draw to adjust for that distortion. Mostly that means that things need to be a lot wider and bit longer. But you need to analyze the drawing to see where the distortion is likely to be bad.

So if you’re doing a straight zigzag stitch down the legs, it will shrink in the width. You’ll want to make it a bit wider there so it doesn’t become pencil thin.

Bird feathers end with a band of stitching around the end of the feather. Again, making the feathers longer and a bit too wide gives your a bit of extra space there will help eliminate the shrinkage effect.

original image
adjusted image
new traced image

I’ve elongated the wings and body on the kingfisher. I wasn’t able to get it completely embroidered to show you, but you can see the shrinking on the feather and the wings

back side of bird mostly embroidered
front side of bird mostly embroidered

It’s not a science. But you can hedge your bets for your best look. Keep watching my face book page to see how this bird looks finished.

What happens if you guess wrong? Several things. Sometimes that wrong guess works better than a correct guess. Sometimes I cut into an embroidery and anchor it with stitching to address the error. One thing is certain. Perfect happens somewhere else. I’m content with beautiful.

But Where Will It Land? The Spotlight on the Background

| ellenanneeddy

I’m a long time hand dyer. I started dyeing fabric when I was ten. My fabric is sponge dyed, which means it can include endlessly different shades. It creates a light source and a small world in itself. What I’ve been reminded of this week is that the background changes everything. It isn’t like you take the elements for a quilt and just transfer them over. The background has an opinion of it’s own. And it demands different things.

This week I embroidered a green heron. I’m pleased with it. Because it worked out so well, I found myself fussing over the background. Originally I tried this background. I liked it. It had an excellent place for a stand of lady slippers. It was right with a moon. I pinned up the heron and watched it disappear before my eyes.

It broke my heart. I thought I knew what I was doing. I went back to my fabric drawer and found several more pieces that might work.

Second green background

There was a green background that gave a little more contrast with the bird. I moved the rocks over on it. Hung it up. Pinned on the bird and found it disappeared there too. There was a huge chrysanthemum clearly in the piece. But it was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Red background

So I pulled out the crazy fabric. Two bright pink/purple/red pieces. It changed the season. The red one needed swirling leaves and a muddy pond rather than a blue one. And there was a sort of “where’s the fire? quality to it.

The darker of the pinks was sort of crazy but fabulous. The bird popped. And it desperately needed fish.

Purple background

What am I doing now? Drawing the fish for it. Not so many but some. And falling leaves. Go figure.

Fish drawing

And it appears this has started me onto a series. I have the backgrounds all prepped and ready. I think I need a kingfisher and a blue heron. Back to the drawing board. Quite literally.

Diving kingfisher. I think it’s the next step.

I could use any kind of fabric. But hand dye is the only fabric that helps me design this way. It’s bossy. But I’m willing to listen, because it gives really good advice.

I’ll Be Feathered: Creating Feathers in Thread

| ellenanneeddy
Green heron

Feathers are perfect subjects for thread. Birds too, but there are many kinds of feathers, defined as always by the angle of the zigzag stitch.

I’ve been working on two birds this couple of weeks: a green heron and a goldfinch.

Goldfinch

It starts with a drawing. This is a drawing on Totally Stable. It goes on the back of the sandwich so it’s my pattern.

The head and underbody of the bid are soft overall feathers. These can be made with a back and forth zigzag stitch done side to side. Layer after layer of thread blends the colors.

Underbelly and leg
Head
top section of wings

The upper part of the wing follows the arc of the feather, shaded with the side to side zigzag The feathers are lined with gold and soft yellow to define them.

Pinions

The pinion feather stitching is made with angled stitches down the feather with a curved arc at the end.

The streak

These feathers have a streak of yellow defining the quill.

Quills do

All in all the stitching separates the kinds of feathers. And creates a bird made strictly of thread and stitchery.