There’s nothing like being on a roll with a piece. You’re sewing away. You have one more bit to do, or maybe three or maybe five. It’s a bit questionable but you push through because it’s so good to be done.
By now I should be prescient about that. That’s a ledge with a chasm right by it. And I should know I’m likely to fall. I did that this week.
three fish
I had that green heron quilt ready to go. Got the heron on. Looked at the fish and decided I needed an odd number. Three was a bit empty. So I decided on five.
five fish
Did I look? Actually I did. Did I think? Perhaps that’s the problem. My brain knows that odd numbers work better than even ones. My eye knew the fifth fish just didn’t fit in. I listened to my brain. Not so smart.
Theories don’t always work. If your eye tells you it’s wrong, then it’s wrong. Had I listened I would have saved myself three hours with a mustache trimmer and seam ripper. And a ruined fish.
Design is important. So is color. So is drawing. But in the end, it’s how the piece balances and flows when it’s all done. This is the part you can foul up with everything else right. And the answer is simple. You need to look at it.
Not just put it up and see. Put it where you can really analyze whether it balances and flows and whether there’s stuff.
I’m bad at this. That moment when I get that urge to finish…. it gets me every time I follow it.
So how do we look at a quilt differently?
Old school is to just back away far enough from it to see it. It’s not enough to see it laid on the table. You need to hang it to see it. I used to hang really large pieces off the porch and walked down the alley to really see it.
I’ve also used a a wide angle viewer. These let you view a big quilt in a small space. They are very valuable.
Another old school method is a ruby beholder, or a color evaluator. It’s a red or green piece of plastic where you can see the values in your quilt as opposed to the colors. It’s a huge help.
All of that steps back to a digital camera. And yes, your cell phone will probably do that.
Just get far enough back to photo the whole piece. And then, changed the photo to black and white. You can see the movement, whether something needs to be put over slightly to one side. Whether you’ve just got a hole or it’s too cluttered. Whether something disappears. It will also show you if you’ve got a value problem.
My bird is a bit subtle here. But I don’t think I mind that. He’s hunting after all, so he needs to be.
Leaves in place
It’s always better to do that before you sew things down. You would think I would learn. Experience is the best teacher, and some fools will have no other.
Every time I demo, I have someone ask if I really sew that fast. Yes. Yes I do.
But not on everything. It depends largely on the kind of sewing you’re doing.
I’ve always said there were two sewing speeds: straight and zigzag. Why? Because different techniques work better with different speeds.
Straight stitching is better at a medium speed. both foot pedal and hands. Too fast you lose control. Too slow you start wobbling. That would be for stippling, bobbin work, and line drawing.
Zigzag stitching is different, The faster you can sew with a zigzag stitch, the better you can fill in the space. It’s possible to go so fast you go over the edge or over your thumb. But barring that, machine speed is your friend , Now your hands are a whole different thing. They move at a crawl, holding hoop to slide it extra slowly, again so you can fill everything in well.
I don’t every really sew slowly. It makes me crazy. Particularly for the zigzag stitch. It just takes so long. You also lose those smooth lines sewing slowly.
Recently I bought a Bernina 790. It’s a proper speed demon, I’ve been working on these larger zigzag appliques and I realized something. They used to take me a lot more time. I’ve been cutting 2-4 days off the embroidery time with a faster machine.
It makes sense. I just hadn’t thought that way. The faster you sew the faster you’re done. I hadn’t realized what a difference that machine was making.
My dad used to say if there was a job that took to long, was too hard or too nasty, you had the wrong tool. The right tool could change all of that. I still haven’t trotted that machine out for bobbin work. I’ve been too busy doing zigzag embroidered appliques to get there.
On of the features of the new machine is that it counts stitches. It tells me I put three million stitches in since October. I think you can see how that happened. I did these fourth birds over the last the last month
What does that mean for you? Find the best machine you can to do the work you want to do. You can work hard. You can work smart. And you can let your machine help. That doesn’t mean the most expensive machine. Try machines out with what you want to do. You’ll know the difference. The right machine makes it so much easier.
When should you slow down sewing? Mostly when you loose control of your stitch or when you start breaking thread in a way that makes you crazy. Other than that, I’d blaze away.
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.
original imageadjusted imagenew traced image
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
back side of bird mostly embroideredfront side of bird mostly embroidered
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.
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.
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.
Commissions force us to do many things. I don’t do realism well. Realism is why God made cameras. Art isn’t limited to realism. But there are people who love it. And need it. Truth to be told, l’m not good at it.
So my birds have purple and blue in them, and so do my frogs. It’s part shading, part colors building.
Dragonflies and roses detail l
I tend to make roses on spirals. It’s the way petals unfold.
Sometimes I let the tails spiral out. I like their motion. I’m told it’s not very realistic.
I have used rubbing plates for a more real rose. This is oil paint stick on hand dyed fabric. Outlined in metallic threads.
Lately I’ve tried roses with the points trimmed away or tucked in.
Will they be realistic enough? That remains to be seen. But they are probably as real as I can get.
Since Don gave me my studio, I’m there pretty much every day. This year, I had my last knee surgery in mid February and was back in the studio in April.
Working in a studio is sort of like gardening. You start something. Sometimes it simply grows on it’s own. Sometimes it grows in the dark. Sometimes you struggle with it. Sometimes it almost does itself.
But it’s a process. The art is a by product of learning and growth for every artist. The business of an artist is building their ability. The art happens by the way.
But this has been a good year, for a year when a fourth of it was spent recovering. I made over 50 quilts this year. I welcomed a new sewing machine. I learned some new tech. And I got to watch many of you stretch in your arts and lives as well. I am so grateful.
These aren’t all this year’s quilts. But here’s the highlights.
972 Shelter from the Storm971 Waterlily Pond
Whether I count it in work, learning, or new tools, it’s been a year I’m grateful for.
And I’m very grateful to Don, who is at the studio every day with me, ready when I need something lifted, or photoed, or looked at. He is the heart of my studio and I would be lost without him. He’s my heart too.
I hope this year brought you new tools. A new passion. Some time to make it happen. People who help you. And the grace to work with it, to work it out. Because if we don’t engage with our art, like a love, like a child like a pet, you can lose it.
Thank you all for the support you’ve given me. I hope I’ve supported you. We are all artists together, on our paths.
Two dimensional art is by nature static. It’s a flat image on a wall. So how do we make the image move? How do we make a two dimensional thing take flight?
There are several good tricks. Movement can be crafted in several small design decisions that convince our eye that the picture is in movement. This quilt I’ve been working on has a number of these features.
I was delighted when I saw a picture of a caterpillar perched on a fiddle head fern. I imagined a mob of caterpillars on the move, looking for lunch.
I started this quilt with some good movement in the fern heads themselves.
The Stems thrust upwards and the curved fern heads move at a spiral angle. Anything headed at an angle as if it’s falling is already in motion.
embroidery backembroidery front
I embroidered a number of caterpillars so I’d have some choices in color and shapes
I placed them several times, looking for the right flow.
This is the one I liked best. I went off the edge with my butterflies.
I like the flow, but it also works because of the interactions of the caterpillars. The angles of the bugs also suggest movement.
Finally I supplied lunch. It doesn’t really add that much to the movement, but the leaves with bites out of them makes me smile.
So to add movement to your art:
Put things at an angle
Go off the edge
Place elements where they interact together.
Put things into a path through the quilt.
The purpose of that movement is to send the eye through the journey of the visual path, to experience each part of the quilt through movement across it.
