No. I did not misspell that. All art, all creative process is a journey where we ask questions about design, color, shape, materials and techniques. Each piece we do is an answer for the question. Do I make a big moon or a small one? Out of Angelina Fiber? Or tulle? Or that strange gold brocade I just brought home? Do I make rays? Or a big circle, or spirals woven into each.
How do you do the black and white parts of a ladybug? Bobbin work again, but showing different directions.
Put them all together and they make a series. Series work helps us answer a billion and one questions.
There are no right or wrong answers. But each quilt gives you other questions to try. And since experience is the best teach, each quilt is a new experience, even if you will never do it again. Try a new thread. Will it work from the top or shall I put it in the bobbin? This machine likes this kind of poly monofilament. Will it work better with a cone holder? Horizontal or vertical? Endless questions that can only be answered by an endless dance of doing.
But the other reason is fascination. We regularly explore bits of the world that fascinate us. I’m fascinated by bugs of all kinds, but in red? Red? Where’s the red?
Well of course, I now have a reason to explore all those reds together. What if she isn’t really red?
Do I find repetition boring? NO! I find repetition changes everything as we put together the puzzle of each piece
So, if there’s something I don’t know the answer to, I sit down with a pile of new work that just might give me the answer. I’m not repeating myself? I’m on a journey. Who knows what I’ll find.
If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that I’m into batch quilting. I do almost all of my embroideries as separate components which I apply to the quilt top. That gives me the freedom to design more organically and to change plans on a dime.
It also has its limits. I draw things for my embroideries. That doesn’t always mean they fit into the design at the end. Not to worry. There’s always another quilt, and there’s always a need for more bugs, birds, flowers, frogs, and anything else I end up batching.
Small batch elements are excellent for creating a visual path within the piece. They server as stepping stones between larger elements that help carry the eye through the piece. They need to be relatively small and bright to do that.
Bright is a flexible definition. In a blue stream, small copper-brown rocks are bright. A piece of lime yarn on a blue-green background is bright. It’s a matter of contrast. For the last three quilts, I’ve been fixated on small yellow birds. First I did ones in flight and then ones perched.
How many do I need? I ended up stitching another batch when I discovered the ones with blue tail feathers disappeared on the sunflower background. It turned into a pile.
But that’s good. I got the major elements settled on the piece and put the yellow birds in place to generate movement.
It can be bold or subtle. Simply aiming the birds so they’re interacting with each other or with the ladybugs I sprinkled in, creates a line of action within the work.
So how many do I need? I really don’t want to get half through the design and find I need to embroider another batch of birds. How many can I make before I’m bored? The only limit is my attention span.
I’ve finally figured out that it’s worth my trouble to trace out my patterns so I have them left over. I also flip them so I have them in two directions. I probably won’t use the same bird in the same quilt, but often they do look very different after they’re embroidered. It’s actually pretty much the same amount of time by way of setup to embroider 12 birds as 6. The stitching is its own time, but that cuts thread set up dramatically. I spend days doing just mushrooms, or frogs or yellow birds.
It’s changed how I work. It’s changed how I think. And it’s changed my output dramatically.
And then there are all of those wonderful leftovers. You can always use another ladybug or frog. For a small work, it can be the focus itself. There really isn’t any waste. Even if I get tired and stop within the process, I have a nice batch of almost finished bits I can use in the next creation.
How many yellow birds did I make? I believe around 20. I forgot to count. Some of them were orange, so does that count as yellow?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
