Art Piece

The Variable Garnet Stitch: Building Texture

| ellenanneeddy

Last week’s octopi are growing. And the stitch to use for anything as lumpy and bumpy as an octopus is the garnet stitch. The fun thing is how many variations there are.

Reviewing Garnet Stitch

Garnet stitch is not a stitch on your machine. It’s working free-motion and moving your hands in circles. You can make all kinds of circles or half circles to different affect. It works either straight stitch or zigzag. It sounds simple.

It’s defined by how fast you move your hands, how large your circles are, and whether you let them overlap or not. The range of effects you can get is stunning. Visually it stands out like nothing else.

zoning

The first thing you do with a project such as this is zone it. Usually, I zone for color. With this project, I’ve zoned for texture as well. For working purposes, I marked the tentacles dark and light, since that was a major concern. Light tentacles are sucker side up. The suckers are different from the main surface, which is different from the eyes, and also different from the skin between the suckers and the main surface. The colors slide through a range between a bottle green and bright yellow, with blue and purple streaks. Nothing subtle here. But zoning my drawing helps me to know where my colors and textures need to be.

The suckers are a bull’s eye garnet stitch: dense stitching in a complete circle with no overlap, There’s a small rim garnet stitch in purple to punch out the suckers.

The general skin is an overlapping loose zigzag with layers of color on it. I’ve topped it off with a seed stitch to make it truly lumpy.

There’s a ridge over the edge where the suckers meet the main skin. I put a red violet edge of garnet stitch overlapping on one side to build the ruffle on.

The suckers seen from the side and the ruffle are pure zigzag stitching.

Finally, I stitched a large seed stitch across the skin to get that lumpy bumpy look.

Octopi are made for garnet stitch! Next week, jellyfish.

Have you Heard This One? What happens if you add Water to a Matisse?

| ellenanneeddy

I get caught in themes. I get excited by birds or fish or bugs, which I do for a while. That’s fun, and it lets me explore different stitchery. But every so often, something new lures me elsewhere.

I’ve been mesmerized by octopui lately. About their wonderful movements and their textures. I’ve been reading a book called Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt. It’s a delightful tale largely of an octopus and a cleaning lady.

I’ve lived almost all of my life with my creatures as my closest companions. Can an octopus and a 70-year-old lady be friends? I’m jealous. I’d love an octopus as a friend.

And Matisse. How do octopi and Matisse mix together?

Matisse did a lot of work that centered on movent and patterns. I deeply love his paintings for their rhythms and movements. Can you see how this starts to mix together? The alien grace of an octopus reminds me of these ladies in their dance.

I’ve always loved these dancers. Now imagine them as octopi. I know. It’s kind of an art joke. But I’ve been wanting to do this for months.

These are the octopus I have planned for the quilt. I think they should all join tentacles and dance. Again, it’s about movement together.

Both the quilt and the painting are about fluid motion, the dance between us as a group. So that must be what I’m working on. I rarely understand a piece until it’s finished, sometimes much after that.

Why do art jokes? Because they make us think differently. And that is largely what art is for. And things need to lighten up a bit right now.

I’ll be showing you more of these octopi as I go along. Next week we’ll talk about garnet stitch zigzag and straight and how to shade with it. Right now I’ve been doing sucker.

Tune in next week for tentacles!

what’s Underneath: How Backgrounds Shade Embroidery

| ellenanneeddy

Like most little girls, I had a pink bedroom. Unlike most other girls, mine was seafood bisque pink with brown. Needless to say, I’m hesitant about using pink. I certainly don’t wear it..

But in spite of my feelings about pink, I know better than to dismiss a color from the color wheel. They’re all in relationship with each other. It’s like putting up with weird Uncle Fred because you really like his wife Ethel. They are deeply connected and you get the one when you choose the other.

And some things are just unabashedly pink. Like roseated spoonbills. So here we are.

She’s a nesting bird, and I loved her pink and brownish background. You can push past your color preferences when you try,

These flowers were mostly white sheers and lace, stitched over in pinks, cream, and whites. The white glowa behind and the thread gives a pink blush. To my mind, they register as white flowers but the shadows echo the burgundy background. It’s a delicate look.

I haven’t done lady slippers for a while. And I wanted a white creeping vine around the outside. But you can’t make something just white. It has no dimension. So this time I used white sheers to form the flowers, but I pulled in other colors to shade them. Because the background is fuchsia, I went for soft pink shading for the white flowers. For the lady slippers, I went into brighter pinks and burgundies, with the white shining through just a bit.

Now, what makes the color of a flower? Or any other thread work? Is it the thread? Or are there other factors.

No matter how much you stitch over something you always see the background. Always. Usually I am for a background color that accentuates the threadwork.

What happens if it doesn’t blend or match? It glows from beneath. I’ve started with iridescent white organza to create an inner glow for the lady slippers.

I stitched from both sides, leaving just a bit of plain iridescent organza in the center to round out the flower. The iridescent background creates an inner glow and a subtle pink.

Here I chose pink sheers and stitched over them with various pink/apricot threads. The effect is vibrant and full of color.

The background I stitch over is as much a part of the color as the threadwork. The differences are subtle but very cool. The combination of light and color creates dimensional blooms that glow.

Living Large: Strategies for Dealing with Large Quilts

| ellenanneeddy

I almost never do bed quilts. I did them when I was younger and watched them die as I used them. It was too depressing. I occasionally will do a baby quilt or a comfort quilt for someone dealing with illness. Mostly I do art.

And since art doesn’t have to be big, I don’t often make something bed-size to put on the wall. Except when I do,

This heron couldn’t be done smaller. At least I couldn’t do it smaller. He’s 60″ x 52″. He’s pretty much the size of God’s underpants.

There are some strategies for dealing with overlarge quilts. The first three are, don’t. But if you’ve decided it must be large, there are several things you can do that will help.

Strategies for Large Quilts

Break it into components. For myself, that means the embroideries. I do them separately and then apply them when the top is ready. But it might be working in rows or in segments. Different quilts will suggest different approaches.

Use larger details. Scaling up the design means there’s less work in it. Sometimes extensive detail just looks ditsy on a larger piece.

Buy extra sewing machine needles. Larger quilts require more tugging and pulling and that will break needles. Promise.

If you have a machine with a wider arm, this is the moment. The arm of your machine is the space between the needle and the mechanical right end. A lot of manufacturers make machines with a longer arm. That’s extra room to shove the quilt through the machine. It can be very helpful.

Use a design wall where you can walk away and really see your design. A design wall should be big enough to accommodate your work and in a big enough space where you can walk away and really look at it. For more information about making and using a design wall, here’s a blog post on it: Studio Essentials: The Glories of the Design Wall.

The other helper is what we used to call bicycle clamps. Roll your quilt, clamp them with these clamps and then you can maneuver it easier.

I don’t do large quilts often. But they do really make a punchline in a gallery show. So this heron is promised to a show at the Peoria Art Guild in September. We should have him crowing by then.

”

telling the Story: How backgrounds Change Everything

| ellenanneeddy

Today I needed a color break. I’ve been frantically finishing the Stitch Vocabulary Book for three weeks, and I was terribly tired of computer work. So I sorted out the fabric I intend to bring to sale at Gems of the Prairie in May, That meant I set aside the pieces I wanted to work up.

Of course, that was an immense pile, Somewhere in it, I found this owl.

He really wasn’t lost. I knew he was around. I just wasn’t sure what pile. He was the third of three owls I made for a quilt that simply never worked.

I found several pieces that I thought would be amazing backgrounds. But a very strange thing happened. It wasn’t just that the fabric made the owl feel different. They actually started telling really different stories about him.

So this had a golden open door he’s going through.

Investigating a flower in the garden. Perhaps with small mice or butterflies.

Flying toward a red moon. Or is it a rose?

Is that a fire or a sunset? Is he flying towards it or in flight away from it?

Or somehow a moonlit winter night. Perhaps with snow. Or a flowering tree with moths?

I’m always astonished by hand-dyed fabric. It’s so versatile and offers so much to design. But I hadn’t seen it as a backdrop to a story. And that’s exactly what it did.

Which will I choose? I’m not sure yet. Normally I’m drawn to color. But there’s something fabulous about that winter moon. And while I work on it, perhaps it will tell me its story.

Translucence: Making Stitchery Look Transparent

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve been rethinking how I usually make my dragonflies for my quilt Great Blue. I picked up some new research books and I was struck how very transparent and translucent their wings were. How could I do that?

Dissolvable stabilizer really is transparent and has that look. But it’s made to dissolve if it gets wet. I can’t promise that won’t ever happen. Humidity itself might dissolve the stabilizer.

I’m pretty sure Saran Wrap would tear. Sure enough not to try it.

I I have used organza or lace. It’s a neat look and I like it. But I wanted a more integrated stitched effect. I wanted them to appear to be see-through.

So I thought about it in terms of thread choices. I love Madeira Supertwist. It’s my go-to metallic thread. There are several color ranges. One range is of solid metallic colors. But one of the color ranges is opalescent and crystal. It’s translucent in itself. So I used it in the transparent part of the wings, and the metallic parts in the exoskeleton of the dragonflies.

It doesn’t look transparent exactly. It looks reflective, like glass or water. Not quite what I had in mind, but I think it does the job.

Here’s the difference. This bug is out of solid metallic thread. It makes a bolder statement, more like an exoskeleton than like see-through wings.

All stitchery is a gigo proposition. Good things in, Good things out. When you use excellent threads and get excellent although sometimes unexpected results. I’m going to try these crystalline threads in other ways where I want a translucent look.

In Black and White: Using Black and White Photography as a Design Tool

| ellenanneeddy

I have a secret design tool. You probably have it too. In your pocket. Yes! It’s your camera phone.

We’ve most of us succumbed to using our cell phones as our cameras. It’s one less thing to stuff in my bra, since most of my clothes lack pockets.

One of the hardest things to evaluate in your art is value. Value is the darks and lights in a piece. Color is like candy. Or antidepressants. You reach for them because it feels great.

But value is so much harder. And vital. Texture and color shine out. But value separates the different components in your piece. The best way is to see it in black and white.

I haven’t mussed much with black and white photography since you had to give black and white pictures to newspapers. I’m really dated by now.

But a black and white image will show how the values are playing in your quilt. And will help show you how your design is moving. Your eye will follow a path made by the brightest object. If you make those objects into a path through the piece, you have a visual path that will showcase your work best.

And current cell phones make it simple. There’s a preset in your camera program that will give you a black-and-white photo.

I used this technique when my friend Sharon asked for some design help on her quilt. You’ll find it at A Visit to the Studio: Dsignng with Another Pair of Eyes,

Every design has a path through it. It can be clear and obvious. But what if it isn’t? And how can you tell?

The black and white photos tell us everything we need to know.

This is the beginning picture with the fish with reeds. This didn’t quite move the way I wanted it to. The reeds didn’t form a clear enough path.

Here we see the placement for the smaller fish. But you’ll also find the placement of the reeds moves things better.

Here’s the final picture with bubbles. The eye travels through the piece with grace.

I always encourage you to take pictures of your piece as you work on it. It’s great to have documentation about your work. But it’s also a great design tool.

The next time you’re unsure about the design of a piece, take out your phone, take a picture, and see it in black and white. It will tell you all you need to know.

Turning Over a New Leaf

| ellenanneeddy

We’ve talked about ways to make leaves more real. Leaves are wonderful shapes in themselves, but because they bend and fold and move, they add movement to your piece.

I’ve been working on a fish quilt that I wanted to frame roughly in kelp leaves, and it seemed like a good study on making leaves fold. Kelp is a water plant that bends completely to the movement of the water. But it has a definite back and front. We’re going to experiment with making the leaves fold for this quilt. Here we have just raw cut leaves.

I can see some purples in this as shadows, perhaps, but what I really want my thread color to do is to define the front and the back of the leaves. I intend to stitch the edges pretty heavily, so I’m going to do the leaves separately. I’ve cut leaves freehand from several scraps of green and glued them to felt with Steak a Seam 2. On the back, I have Stitch and Tear which is a crisp tear-away non-woven interfacing. So my embroidery sandwich is my hand dye, Steam a Seam 2, and Stitch and Tear.

I took a piece of the release paper from the Steam a Seam 2 leaf cuts and have folded it in different ways so you can see how that affects the leaf. The front side edges will have heavy crenellation on them. The back sides will be smooth where the folds are.

My thread zones are back and front sides. The front needs to be bright/dark /intense colors. The back needs to be muddy, greyed, soft colors.

It seems like the fabric should define the leaves completely, but I’ve found that’s never really so. What defines much of the leaf color is the thread. If the thread is purple it’s at least a purplish leaf. Sometimes that’s the way to go.

stitching the leaves

Here’s a video showing the crenelated stitched edges.

The leaves fold in the water. On the front side, their edges are crinkled and bright. The edges on the back sides are smooth and greyed out. once they’re applied to the quilt I can take sheers and lace and overlay them with water so they look wet.

Here are some of my separate leaves, made to fold in the water.

I’m not so sure about this layout. I think I need to leave it on the wall for a while and see if I have the placement right. I may have overdone. But since nothing is stitched down, nothing is written in stone. I’ll see how it looks in the morning.

To explore more ways to make leaves check out my previous blog post, Over and Under