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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Thread Colors to Dye For: How To Dye Threads for Shading

I’m obsessed with thread shading. I want images to be as 3-d as possible. To do that I shade with as many colors as I can. With regular #40 embroidery thread, I can use almost an infinite number of colors to shade an image. Particularly for a larger image. It’s a pretty large paint box. And you can use them all.

With heavy weight bobbin threads, there’s just not that much space in an image to shade. So this is my answer. Instead of adding more and more colors, I dye the thread so that it’s got a range of color within each thread.

Most commercially dyed thread comes in one of two styles. Either they mix a dark color with a number of lighter shades ending in white. Or they do the rainbow either in pastels or brights. The rainbow color ones work for stippling. They don’t shade well at all. The ones with dark to white leave a white area I really don’t like.

Most images can be zoned in dark, medium and light areas. They also can be zoned into different colors, like the spots and the frog’s body.

Dyeing threads to shade images can be set up the same way. You can dye a shader, a shocker and a smoother. The shader thread is the color of your image darker than you want the whole image to be. Add in a dark shading color like dark brown, purple, green or blue, or it’s complement, plus 4-6 dark shades of the whole color. The shocker is a medium range of 5-6 colors with a shocking color mixed into it. Usually a bright complementer color works best as a shocker. The smoother is a color that is a bright highlighter shade that fills in the image and finishes in the shaded image.

The range of colors gives you at least a 15-18 color range in a small bobbin work image. Other colors can be added. There are no rules, but here are some color ranges that work well.

Shader: Dark orange, yellows and reds, and browns

Shocker: Yellows and two purples

Smoother: Yellows and oranges

Shader: Dark purples, blues and greys

Shocker: Medium greys and teals

Smoother: Medium to light purples

Shader: Teals, and oranges

Shocker: Yellows and teals

Smoother: Yellows, and oranges

You get the idea. Dye the thread to do your shading for you. As you fill in the stitching with rhythmic motions, the shading progresses across the image. All you have to do for thread like that is dye for it.

The Dirty D Word: Dyslexia Rocks!

Envy

f

Everything worth doing is worth doing badly. I wish I drew well. I don’t. But what I don’t lack in skill, I own in stubbornness. I am willing to keep doing something badly a very long time if I wish to do something well.

I’ve been revisiting my drawing skills as I’ve been starting new work. I’ve needed a fish in the next piece and spent some time this week. It sent me back to my books and my drawing board to struggle with the dirty d word again.

My drawing surface is an iron on pull off pellon product called Totally Stable. It shows up at sewing stores everywhere. The iron on part is like a freezer paper with a softer drawable, tear-away hand.

light pencil sketch

I wish it were possible to just draw free motion. I can sketch but it helps if there’s a drawing to start from. The hardest thing for me is that I can’t draw smooth lines. I rough things out, and then scratch all over them and then I trace and retrace over and over again. Is that wrong?

rougj outline sketch

It may be but it doesn’t matter much. It’s just the best I can do. I’m deeply dyslexic. It’s not a problem, it’s just a condition. Really, it’s it’s own gift. A different way of looking at things.

When I moved my studio over, I found some french curves I’d bought a while back. I didn’t quite get the use of them. I kept trying to. I just couldn’t quite get it. I didn’t see how the shapes fit around the drawings. Dyslexic.

I have a light table. It helps to have illumination. Even from beneath.

fitting the template to the curve

So I got out my rulers and took my drawings and smoothed them. I turned the plastic templates over and over around the lines and found they did fit in if I was working just in small areas at a time. Using the curves, I outlined the drawing cleaning it, smoothing it out. At first I thought I was cheating. And then I realized I wouldn’t have blinked if I was using a ruler for straight lines instead of soft curves,

It fell apart when I went to do his scales. I didn’t have a template that fit that. So I have shaky scales.

Then I realized he was heading the wrong way. More dyslexia. But this is the good part. The directions just are different for me. I mix them up but I can get there in a heartbeat.

I pulled out my light table, flopped over my drawing and traced it the other direction.

I don’t do this for myself, but for the blog, I zoned the drawing in color, so you can see where I’m going. The fish up above is the same kind of bass, but in another quilt. Just so you can get the idea.

Of course the question is whether smoothed out drawings are better? Is there something stronger in a rough edge. Or have I just made my drawing more defined? I need to sew it out to know.

For you, I hope you grab any tool you need without embarrassment or shame and use it to do what you dream. It’s not cheating. It’s working with what we’ve got.

Owled: More Serieous Work

Hunter’s Moon 2

I can’t explain my fascination with owls! I only know I want to fly with them. In general, I think it’s the silent, swift explosive movements they make. I only wish I could move that way.

Or it just could be a need to occasionally work with browns. Owls will do that for you.

Or the desire to live in the light of the moon. I don’t do them often, but I love it when I do.

Or their faces, wise and feral, and all seeing. I would very much like to be an owl.

Sometimes its a wonderful thing when a quilt doesn’t work. I did an attempt of a quilt with 3 owls in it that was awful. I never got the background to work. But the owls… Three owls. Just doing nothing.

Hunters Moon 2 detail

Here is the first owl in Hunters Moon 2

I’m working with the second owl now in Owl at Sunset. It will be in process for a while, but I thought you might like to see some of it’s bits.

Woo knows what will happen with the third one. Aren’t you glad that first quilt didn’t work. I am.

sun and rocks added

Come back and I’ll show you more as I get there. It can’t get more serieous.

And check out these other Serieous Blogs!