series

A Bevy of Sunflowers: Why Aren’t They Strictly Yellow?

| ellenanneeddy

Sunflowers are irrepressable. Last summer we had a sunflower field nearby. It’s one thing to see a sunflower in someone’s yard. But a whole field! Fabulous!

So I spent a good two weeks in color therapy making these sunflowers. These were made of organza and hand-painted lace fused to hand-dye, felt, and Stitch and Tear. They were stitched as whole flowers to go on the top, so I could cut away any distortion before I applied them. I used not just sunflower yellow, but the purples, and greens that make the shadows of a sunflower.

Color is a fine antidepressant, and these made me happy. All I need to do now is stitch them into the piece. I placed similar colored birds in and out of the petals. I think I’ll add ladybugs for a dash of red.

But there’s another good reason to add in purple and green. Classical art was always reaching toward realism. When photography was invented, we had all the realism we couldn’t attain as artists. I respect realism. But I know a losing battle when I see one. I can be more realistic, but it’s not my skill or my goal. I want to hold the moment in impossibly beautiful color.

Once I walk outside into the world, realism fails me. Because the sunflowers do have streaks of green and purple and everything is colored by the available light. If the light is purple, everything is somewhat purple. If I’m using a hand-dyed background, the light is defined by the color of the background, and everything fits within that. In blue light, a sunflower would be blue. I haven’t tried that. But now that I’ve thought it….

The light is also colored by my mood. I’m the artist. I can’t help but paint what I see.

Here’s some other sunflowers I’ve made over time. Vincent Van Gogh was right. You just can’t make too many sunflowers. It’s a good cure for the summertime blues.

Drawn to the Sun

A Can of Worms: Always Supply lunch

| ellenanneeddy

Nobody Loses All The Time

nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol’s farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who’d given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scruptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and
i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol’s coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol
and started a worm farm)

e.e.cummings

I’ve always thought of my creatures as being alive. Not in the sense of breath or heartbeat, but in having a purpose and a place of their own. They go places I can’t go. They do things for others I can’t do. They will live past me. I know I don’t control them, not even in the process of making them. They come from me, but I know they have lives of their own.

I also see them as beautiful. If it’s a beauty that scares me, that’s ok. I want to make them beautiful in what they are.

So when I make a piece, I build them the best world I can. Something that reflects their beauty in their place. And I always try to give them what they need. Along with the beauty of water and sky, earth and rock, I always supply lunch.

I’m a bit out of my depth when I do something like a flock of guinea hens. I see my birds, frogs, and bugs as splendiferous creatures with their own beauty. Barnyard stuff, not so much. But the point is to see something’s beauty in their space. So I provided the things I though would improve the barnyard esthetic. I added hollyhocks, ladybugs. and worms.

I’ve never done worms before much. But I wanted worms for my hens for several reasons. For one thing, they’re funny. I didn’t want cute worms with eyes. But these guinea hens remind me of the ladies at coffee hour after church. They are, by nature, silly. So the worm joke is practically implied.

I’d also noticed that the guinea hens, past their spots and funny hats are basically chickens with bad manners. They do like worms.

I also wanted a horizontal line feature that carried the eye in places across the canvas. Worms did that.

There was a small problem. The piece is purply brown. How do you make worms show up?

We ended up with some creative color choices.

I started with a medium brown, a red purple and then went into magenta, rust red, salmon pink, and a dusty rose for the highlights. The salmon pink looked way out of line when I put did that row. But the dusty pink settled it down to a proper worm color.

So now the guinea hens have their own buffet. Perfect for the after-church crowd. What a can of worms!

Splitting the sky: The Advantage of Split Light Sources

| ellenanneeddy

I don’t piece well. It’s not my skill. Anything that takes accuracy and careful cutting really isn’t my skill. The new 770 Bernina came with a foot that does make it better, but I don’t normally do large pieced tops. I know better. It’s not pretty when I do.

But there are rare occasions when I piece a split light source top.

Why? Why walk into accuracy land and piecing?

A light source brings you fabric with direction, and a built-in world. That world can be integral by itself. But if you want to filter the light as if it were through haze, woods, or shadow, you can piece two light source fabrics to create that shaded look. There are several approaches, with different effects.

Vertical Piecing

Where the Heart is

Where the Heart Is was pieced from two separate yards of the same blue/orange color range. I lay both pieces together on the cutting board and cut them in gradated strips, 2″, 3″, 4″, etc. Then I sewed them together with the narrowest light of one to the widest side of the other, in gradation. Set in a vertical arrangement, it makes for light flowing through the trees.

Horizontal Piecing with a Frame

Envy

Envy was one horizontal light source yard, split in gradations with a half yard cut in 2″ strips put between. The piecing creates a sense of space. The narrowest strip in the gradation defines the horizon line.

Piecing within Multiple Frames

Sometimes I split the two fabrics with the light at the widest on one side and the dark widest cut so they can carry the light across the piece. Twightlight Time was also double framed with a 2″ and a progressive border. Having a narrower border on the top weights the bottom of the piece.

Piecing Machines

Lately, Don found me a Singer 99 at a yard sale. For those of you not familiar with these darlings, they are a featherweight industrial drop-in bobbin Singer. They only straight stitch, but the stitch is impeccable. They are tougher, and faster and they use bobbins that are still commercially available. I’d never seen one before, but I fell in love instantly. It took a little work and some creative parts searching, but Don got it working for me and it’s perhaps the best piecing machine I’ve ever had. Did I mention Don is my hero?

So I pieced the guinea hen’s background on it.

How do you keep it straight? It’s tricky. If I get them out of order the fabric doesn’t progress correctly through its colors. I make all my cuts, leave the fabric on the cutting board until I can number the pieces all on the back side. Since there are two pieces of fabric cut, I label my fabric, 1a,2a, etc. and 1b, 2b, etc. and chalk in the sequence on the ends so I can always keep them in order.

Expanding Fabric Size

Sometimes there’s just a beautiful fabric that needs to be bigger. That’s been known to happen too.

I needed a background for What the Flock, a grouping of guinea hens. I’m low on fabric and money right now, so I have to make do. I found a purple piece that should make a great meadow, but a yard was just a bit small. So I pieced in another half-yard to expand it. I cut the half yard in 2.5″ widths and graded the yard-long piece in segments of 9″, 8″, 7″, 6″, and 5″,

Seam Rollers

For those of you like me, who hate to run back and forth to the iron, there is a seam roller. You can use this gadget to flatten your seams right where you’re sewing. Roll it over the seam and you’ll have flat, ready-to-sew seams without the iron woman run.

I don’t piece often, but these backgrounds are worth it. I love the shaded light and the action of light of the fabric across the piece.

Using My Enemy Color: Getting Over Pink

| ellenanneeddy

My mother made sure I had a pink bedroom as a girl. But being herself and a sophisticat, she made it brown and that orangy pink that only the fifties could love. Between that and pink being a color for silly girls, I wrote pink off. Magenta, yes. Fuschia of course. But no baby pink ever!

When we were 5 my cousin Peggy and I decided that yellow was our enemy color. We would never wear yellow beause of that. We had a point. It didn’t flatter either of us. Yellow was the enemy.

Yellow is still unflattering, and I still won’t wear it. But I have come to a truce with it. The truth is, you can’t just cut yourself off from a color as an artist.The world is full of colors and they all need each other no matter how you feel about them. You need them all. Which brings me to my other enemy color, pink.

Except that you really can’t do that. Sooner or later there will be a reason for every color. And you’ll need it in your crayon box.

I could have never used pink if I hadn’t found roseated spoonbills.

I’ve been in love with dinosaurs all my life. When paleantologists started talking about birds coming directly in line from dinosaurs, I went on a bird binge. Particularly the big water birds that clearly are dinosaurs. I’m still there. I loved there odd legs and wings and bills.

I’d worked with herons before. And I still love them. But the roseated spoonbills were unabashedly pink. And clearly dinosaurs. They turned my world upside down enough to use baby pink.

Pink or not, I couldn’t help myself. Maybe it’s the bill. Or the long stalky legs. Or the idea that something very old is still marvelous and wonderful, and part of our world. I can relate.

If it makes something that wonderful I’ll use baby pink and coral pink, seashell pink, flesh pink. For a roseated spoonbill, anything.

Do you have a color you just don’t like? Be brave. Embrace it. It maybe the only thing that makes what you want come to life. Mix it in with other things and watch it show you where it’s place in the world is.

At the Turn of a Head: How little Details Create the Visual Path

| ellenanneeddy
Before owls

I’ve been working on this quilt for some while, and it’s gone through several transformations. We had a mocking bird in here which is now slated for a later flight, somewhere else. And we’ve added lizards and subtracted lizards. All the way through, it’s been a stumbly path.

But each quilt needs to build a path for your eye. It’s more obvious with elongated quilts, but if you want movement in your work, you need to help the eye move.

What makes your eye move? Usually the small things: rocks, bugs, a strand of yarn over the piece, leaves. In this case, it’s bugs and owls. What makes the owls seem to move? The turn of their heads. What makes the owls heads move? What they’re looking at, of course.

It helps that the owls are darling. I’ve been in love with them since I stitched them in. But I found the path of the whole piece depended on what they were looking at.

It’s not an exact science, but we look where the owls are looking. It all turns on the turn of the heads.

I’ve talked a lot about the visual path. You can find more information about it on the new web page: It’s the Little Things: Building the Visual Path.

We have it all embroidered and stitched down now. Next stop: backing and binding.

Creating Color by Underpainting

| ellenanneeddy

I talk alot about color theory, choosing of threads and creating color schemes. The nature of thread painting is no different than any other art. It’s a creating of colors from components. How you arrange those components changes the effect you get.

I usually line up colors light to dark and add in a shocker and a shader. That color scheme gives us a smooth layer of color that builds on itself. It’s pretty. But it hasn’t got a whole lot of depth.

Sometimes I separate the the scales into a dark and light zone. That creates a deep separation on the scales without any shading. That’s pretty too.

I wanted something different for this fish. I wanted the scales deeply separated and clear. So I underpainted my fish first in blues, purples and greens, and then over painting with yellows and oranges.

Is it extra work? Yep. Would I do it all the time? Probably not.

But one of the wonders of doing Koi is their textures. The textures of fins and scales and their sense of motion is all of that.

So I started underpainting with the complements of the piece. Since the fish is yellow orange, the underpainting should be blue. green and purple.

He’d be pretty if I just continued in that range. Instead, after establishing the darker underpainting, I painted over with yellow and orange threads.

After that, I added a light layer of turquoise metallic thread for flash and black outline for definition.

This is where I think I’m going with this. The underpainting separates and lifts each scale and the outlining nd flash stitching punches it visually.

If you are keeping score of colors on the color wheel, you’ll notice it has a full range of analogous colors from Yellow, green, purple to blue.

Is one method better. Heavens, no! It’s a matter of having choices and knowing what those choises offer you. Now I’m off to stitch rocks and hostas.

component Quilting: Planning Ahead for the Small Stuff

| ellenanneeddy

What do these two quilts have in common? Not that much. They’re a different shape. They’re a different color space. They’re a different time of day. They’re clearly both heavily embroidered and oil paint rubbed. But other than that?

They both needed small elements to guide the visual path within. I made all the bugs for White Garden. But I didn’t need them all. The others went into Fire Flies.

Large embroideries take time. I draw them, look at them with some scruteny and eventually embroider them after I’m sure they’re right. It takes time. And effort. Usually a larger embroidery takes about a week to a month. They are a long term investment in time and energy.

If I’ve drawn them well, they should have energy and movement within them. But a good moving image needs to be placed in motion. One easy way to create movement is by the stepping stones of smaller elements. I often use rocks, bugs, butterflies, frogs, flowers and other natural images to help direct that path.

So it stands to reason, I need a lot of those. I do make batches of them for specific projects. But I always make way more than that one project needs. I used to stitch them directly into the quilt. I’ve changed to stitching them separately because it allows me much more flexability.

Why? It’s time effective. I don’t need to set up the thread, redraw the cartoons, and go through just enough flowers or bugs. A batch of them, with leftovers is as good as extra waffles the day after you made them. It’s just smart.

It’s also fun to sit down to a sheet full of little fish or flowers. It’s a lovely 2 day project, usually.

Do I have a collection of these things? You betcha. But they go away fast. There’s always another quilt that needs a trail of bugs.

building a Background

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve spent the last week working on this lizard. He’s ready now for a home.

That’s not as easy as it sounds. Ive done a series of these lizard pieces. They’re based on stone floors and wild things growing through the cracks.

I have a collection of ceiling tiles I use for larger rubbing plates. But I felt a need for something new. So I headed to Lowes in search of texture.

I’m very excited by this rock panel. It’s on a mesh, and perfect for oil paint stick rubbing. But I tried some other things as well

I’m not sure I’m there yet. But I’m working on building the right home.

Tiny: Embroidered miniature Bugs

| ellenanneeddy

I’m worn out after doing a bunch of big pieces. Big is of course, relative. I consider anything past 33″ x 43″ largish. I like workin that size. But the last ones have stretched larger, and I’m tired of shoving large wads of fabric through the machine.

I’ve been working on a white garden piece. The idea came fromThe White Garden, a speculative fiction about Virginia Wolf. She was thinking about an all white garden for the blackout, so that the moon would show on the white petals. I found some embossing plates that were wonderful prarie grasses. I put them on dark blue hand dye in shades of white and blue.

I’ve never had the dicipline to plant only white flowers. Too much of a color junkie. But I love the idea.

This is a visual path piece. It’s about 12″ x 45″ So everything has to be tiny.

So I made a strip of white and pale flowers. But then it needed moonlight and bugs. No one said the bugs had to be white.

How is tiny embroidery different than large pieces. Several things work differently. First off, I want to avoid a thick outline. So instead of embroidering on a sandwich of hand-dye, felt, stitch and tear, and totally stable, I left out the hand dye, and embroidered on the felt instead. Since I wqs using black outlines, I used black felt. Using felt reduces the bulk, but I found it could not be ripped out or sewn over. This is partially why I made a lot more bugs than I would need.

I could have embroidered tiny pieces within the piece. But I chose not to this time. It still makes for a lot of distortion. So I did a batch of moths, fireflies, snails and rocks.

Embroidering tiny pieces insists upon simplification. The usual shocker-shader colors are too much. A simple range works better: gold and green, white and blue, green and blue.

The fireflies are also mostly unshaded. There’s no room for anything except the primary colors of red and green.

So my white garden is full of wild color, very tiny bugs. I think I could find my way in it.