series

Setting Up Shimmer: Moving Color Across the Quilt

| ellenanneeddy
Stippling with flecked metallic

The natural world is full of shimmer. Shimmer is about the change of color, and the change of light. The nature of nature is variance.

How can we create that? How do we build a world inside our art? How do we create the illusion of shimmer and light?

Here are several good ways to accomplish that.

Owl at Sunset process shots.

Hand dyed fabric itself establishes the play of color that nature features. But it’s a soft finish and a soft shimmer. It gives the background of shifting color, and a good glow, but it doesn’t catch the light.

Another way is to put sheers in layers over the the hand dye. It changes the color without losing the fabric beneath it. It shifts the shade underneath and adds texture.

I know some people don’t like the idea of the stipple. But stippling creates more texture and plays against the surface of the quilt. Particularly if your threads shine.

I’ve always found it helpful to separate the kinds of threads I use for field and ground. Different threads offer difference in the shine of the surface. Having a different shine for water, for air, for sunlight, and for your creatures helps your eye to sort those out from each other.

There are three kinds of metallic thread that offer different levels of shine.

Madeira Supertwist Metallic Thread

Fish done in flecked metallic

The soft sheen of Madeira Supertwist gives the fish a scale like sheen that is totally different from either the sliver or the thick metallic threads. That sheen separates the fish from the background, the field from the ground.

Sliver like threads
Stippling with sliver

Sliver, Glimmer, and other flat metallic threads are the most shiny. They look like Christmas tinsel. They come in a myriad of colors, particularly if you are willing to mix different brands. There’s no problem doing that.

YLI Candlelight, Madeira Glamour and Superior Razzle Dazzle are # 8 weight heavier metallic threads. Again, the company brands can be easily used together. These threads have a thick chunky look that is strong and works with rhythmic stitching as beautiful running water. Stitching through a range of color accentuates the light and shadow within the piece. It’s not quite as shiny as sliver, but it makes a strong statement.

You can see the separation between the air and the water in the changes between sliver and thick metallic.

Both sliver threads and thick threads should be used in the bobbin only.

I use all of these threads to make light shimmer across my quilt. And I choose a full range of colors to pull the eye across the surface. And to make the eye track the differences between field and ground by the amount of shine in the threads.

More Serieous Work: Herons and Walking on Water

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943-20 Heron Pond

I remember the first time I saw a heron land on a pond. I watched it fold itself out of flight and land floating, tidied. You couldn’t imagine from it’s folded form, the shadow of it coming into land. Fierce and lovely, Of course I fell in love.

Eerie Street, Chicago

But that was not my first love. When scientists started to declare that birds were dinosaurs, I roared up in agreement. The only thing as fierce as a heron is a dinosaur! And the resemblance is striking. I’m a believer.

Lady Blue

Part of why I celebrate dinosaurs, and herons, and their survivors is that I see myself as a survivor. We all are. Living means that, so far, you’ve survived life. And time gives us a space to unpack that and understand a little the gifts we’ve been given.

Fall Stream

They aren’t always pretty. Survival can be a messy business. But it reminds me that I have strength and swiftness, if not in my body in my mind. I can be lovely even in my fierceness, if I choose to use it well.

Daylily Pond

And if I am a dinosaur of sorts, my survival, my ability to go on is strength in itself. I am grateful.

Where the Heart is

And I’m going to need it. I’m probably having my right knee replaced again, due to an infection. If I can’t walk, I should be able to fly. I’m related to the Pteranodons, thru my mother’s side. I can survive anything.

Drawing in the Dark: Using Black Stitchery As a Pencil Sketch

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We think of free motion as a straight stitch. But free motion zigzag stitch offers us an ability to detail and shape an applique as if we were shading it with a pencil. If we use black thread, it looks exactly like a shaded sketch.

Simple shapes cut out of oriental brocade and fused to black felt with Steam a Seam 2 make the form of this ladybug.

I’m using some simple zigzag directional stitching to shape the outlines, shadings and the smoothing between them. Straight through creates a wide zigzag, like an applique stitch. Stitching on a 45 degree angle gives me an outline. Moving side to side creates a shading stitch.

I’ve outlined the head and created a segment through the back to create depth.

Shading along the edges and smoothing gives the image a rounded shaped appearance.

Instead of drawing spots on the red brocade, I outlined the segments in black, shaded them and smoothed them. Again, it makes a nicely plump ladybug.

She’s all embroidered here.

Here’s what the back looks like. It really does make a pencil sketch.

Number 40 weight black polyester thread does all the shading , just like a pencil.

Here are three of these bugs, in a possible background. Endless shade and shadow, just with black thread and a zigzag stitch.

If You Must Be Square, Make It Move: The Spiral Secret

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Hummingbird

We’ve talked about how elongated quilts are already in motion, just because of their shape. But how do you make a square quilt move? One easy way to do it is to design a moving shape inside the square

All Time is Spiral in a Garden

A spiral is a visually moving shape that fits easily into a square.

Flying Rose

Here the rose is constructed out of spiral shapes of sheers, twisted in among each other.

Even just a thin spiral vine can energize this group of dragonflies.

Silent Splendor

Sometimes the spiral is in the stitching.

Sometimes it’s in a leaf.

Moth Mandela

Sometimes it’s just ordered shapes.

But a spiral anywhere will help carry the viewer’s eye across the surface of the quilt.

Serieous Work: Dancing Trees: If I Can’t Move That Way, They Can

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Fall Fanfair
Fall Fanfair

My mother gave me dancing trees. We were in a train at Christmas time watching out the window when she told me, “Look Ellen, they’re dancing.”

690Fall Fanfair detail

I’ve never gotten over that. They’re still dancing.

Dancing is its own miracle. Life is a dance, and hopefully, we learn to move in it.

Not all of us do. I was taught not to move. Sitting very quietly was much safer. Instead, I lived in my head and my hands.

But it was in high school that I learned not to dance. It seems people’s mores disappear on the dance floor. It was worse than not being asked. It involved being thrown in to the bleachers. Too humiliating to try again. I’m told I should get over that. I have and I haven’t.

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

My friends, Donna and Roy Hinman gave me back dancing. They ran a contra dance party once a month. Contra is a gentle Ring around the Rosie game for grownups. It was wonderful to move with everyone and be a part of it. Slowly they coaxed me back into the dance.

A life time of not moving is hard to translate into a life of movement. I was able to dance at my wedding. I move in my water aerobic classes. I’m limited by age, wear and tear. But if I can’t always dance, my trees can.

Serieously Mantis: The Bug from Outer Space

| ellenanneeddy

I fell in love with praying mantises the first time I saw them. The eyes! Those glowing, impossible eyes. And the way they move! They’re every bad Sciffy movie you’ve ever seen.

I can’t say a thing for their domestic arrangements. But they are great gardeners. They will take care of your garden like no one else. Each year I would put in Mantis eggs. I rarely saw them. They would hatch 2 inch bright green baby mantises. My roses grew happy, with praying mantises guarding them like big eyed pit bulls.

That’s not the only reason though. My body has always felt so odd, so different and so scary. Add to it the insults that came daily from classmates and it won’t’ be a surprise that I felt like was from outer space. So when I saw my first praying mantis, beautiful and weird I knew I’d met a kindred soul.

I’ve learned several things from mantises.

Celebrate your weird. It’s yours! It will give you notions, dreams and destinations all your own.

Celebrate your beauty, even if it’s unlike anyone elses. If they can’t see it, it’s like not looking at blue skies or the rainbows in puddles. Their loss.

Dance whenever you can.

More Serieous Work: The Floating World: Dragonflies

| ellenanneeddy
Three Point Landing

Dragonflies are signature for me. I’ve loved dragonflies since my father brought them for me from his fishing exhibitions. I’ve quilted them in a million ways, and yet there’s always something I need to do further with them. Why?

There are several things that mesmerize me. How things move! They’re shiny! And then there’s this odd connection where I see myself in it. Dragonflies have it all! They shimmer, their movements are startling, and I see myself somehow darting from one thing to another. I can’t leave them alone.

Swoop Dive

They’ve been a favorite demo creature for me because they are so familiar. But nothing is more revealing than what you do for demo. I miss doing demos, because they are the core of the art. It’s what you can do as an artist when you’re left brain is busy explaining it all.

Whatever you do as art at the point has to be a bone set skill. Unlike studio work, you have to make decisions and simply go with them at a thirty second pace. It’s the potters equivalent of throwing cylinders. It’s the showing off of a skill.

Why do things over and over? Because it’s a dance. There is no right or wrong. Simply the movement of design and color in the kaleidoscope of a familiar shape.

Dragonfly and Waterlily

Reaching Upward: The Vertical Visual Path

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You’ll remember in blog post Don’t Be Square, we introduced visual paths. Visual paths are a designed pathway through your quilt to guide the eye across the surface. A vertical visual path works differently than a horizontal one. Horizontal visual paths pull your eye across the width of your quilt.

A vertical visual path almost always draws your eyes up through the piece? Why? Largely because of the shape of the quilt and the fact that we usually follow things from the bottom up when we look at them. These dynamic dimensions already launch the viewers eyes up the quilt.

But good planning and design help as well. If we place similar objects along the pathway, the eye will also follow those, just like stepping stones. The flowers aren’t big, but the direct your eye through the piece effortlessly.

I favor ‘s’ shapes for the visual pathway. But other shapes work as well. Any direction that pulls the eye makes the whole surface of your work pop as your eye travels through. The squirrel himself makes the visual path here, and he’s traveling straight down. Either way, it makes the eye move.

Stems on the flowers, and the blooms themselves start the eye down to find the turtle. Whatever direction your path goes and whatever stepping stone you use, it makes the dynamics of your quilt work to show off every wonderful detail.

So don’t be square! Play with elongated shapes, and see where your visual path takes you!

Why Is That Fish Glowing: Building Luminous Color With Thread

| ellenanneeddy
embroidered fish for owl at sunset

Luminous color is not an accident. Nor is it necessarily following Mother Nature. There are some easy tricks for building color that glows. Note this fish is done in free motion zigzag embroidery, but the color theory works in any technique.

You can see that the original kind of fish I was embroidering is mostly green and off white with a little brown. I’ve taken my drawing and zoned it so that I know where I want the darker greens and the lighter colors. The mouth and the eye are a separate zone each and are handled differently.

When you choose a range of colors you go way darker than you intend as your start color and end way lighter. Somewhere in there, you should have a shocker and a shader.

The shader should be a dark color that’s not in the color range, A dark complement like deep red for something green, or purple for something golden brown always works well. Here I used a layer of dark purple.

A shocker is a color that shocks your eye. It should be the third or second color right before your done. For this fish, I chose orange.

I know, I know, there’s no orange in the fish. But there he is and that is what makes him glow. I don’t reproduce nature. I indulge her. Besides, you’ll see that last light green colors most and the orange will be peaking out from behind, waking up your eyes.

the eye zone, iris and pupiil

The eye is zoned differently, and done with sliver thread. Gold for the iris. Black for the pupil and a dash of white for the spark.

Don’t be afraid of very bright colors in embroidery. Build them up from dark to light and add a shocker and a shader for emphasis.

A fish in the hand

Into the water he goes!