The leaf is all one piece of fabric. The threadwork defines the fold.
If you’re making nature quilts, you’re likely to need to answer the leaf question. Leaves ripple and rumple and almost never lie flat. And they fold. How do we make that happen on the quilt surface?
Here some approaches.
defined by stitch
I tend to use a free motion zigzag stitch mostly to apply leaves. It’s fluid. It follows curves. And I can change color at will. I also tend to use a polyester Neon embroidery thread by Madeira. It’s strong, bright as a button and light enough to stitch over several times until I get what I want.
Dividing a leaf in half and coloring it with one side dark and the other light creates an immediate sense of dimension for this quilt. It’s the same fabric, but the coloration changes with the thread choices.
defined by applique method
Direct applique is applied right to the top of the piece with glue. I use Steam-A-Seam 2 by preference because it allows me to move the piece around before I iron it into a permanent place.
This makes simple shapes easily. But it doesn’t allow for wild curves and vines
The leaves are drawn on a separate fabric and stitched to the top. Then the access is all trimmed away.
cutaway leaves
Cut-away applique is done with a cloth laid over the top and stitched in the shape you want. Then the leaves, vines and trees can be cut away along the stitch line, leaving more fluid shapes.
Leaves formed by cut-away applique continue the background shading through peek-a-boo holes.
Cheesecloth leaves
The sheer qualities of cheesecloth and the texture mimics the cell structure of the leaves and lets bits of the background through. Cheesecloth makes fabulous leaves and can be dyed any color with Procion dyes. The wild stitching with lime and orange makes them look crinkled.
Making the leaf fold
This cheesecloth leaf folds along the darker blue line of thread. The threadwork itself defines the fold. The purple line on these leaves folds the center and the two slightly different thread colors top and bottom help confirm that.
Mostly leaves are defined by threadwork. These are some ways to make leaves look like they popped out of the background. And that’s pretty much what you want.
Threadwork is delicate. Just because threads are tiny thin things. Just by their nature.
We can layer threads infinitely. But singularly they don’t have a lot of effect. So how do we keep threadwork from mushing into a soft blend? We need a spark. If we take just light and dark shades of a color, that’s a good start. But it’s bland.
What makes a spark? Contrast. Either in color, in shine or in temperature. High contrast keeps it from being dull. And since thread is such a little thing, it we can use intense contrast without overwhelming the piece.
sheen
The first thing we see with thread is it’s sheen. How shiny is it? Threads come from dull cottons, to smooth rayons and polys to sparkly metallics. The eye sees the sparkle first.
So if we want something to stand out, something really shiny will make the spark. Which is why I use Sliver, and a number of other flat shiny threads.
If you’re doing animals, you want their eyes to be the thing you see first. Sliver does that. You make an iris of any color, a black pupil, and a small iridescent spark inside the eye. It’s a spark inside a spark. And it brings an eye to life.
Or I can make my background shimmer by stippling sliver in gradated colors across the piece. Sliver is a delicate thread. It works best in a regular bobbin case. I use a matching polyester thread on top. If I stipple pretty much last, all the other stitching tells me where the stippling should be.
color
Color contrast always startles the eye. The highest contrast in color is always going to be the complement. Complements are powerful. The blue and peach make a spark between them to shade this bird.
The pinks are sparked by the yellow green overstitching that makes the feathers an flowers.
temperature
The hot gold details stand out against the smooth greens and blues and lights up the feathers.
black and white: Contrast in Value
Both black and white are extreme contrast. For threadwork, I’m careful of both of them. But they give us an edge. I almost always outline in solid black or black metallic. But on the raven’s wings, I overstitched the feathers with black to make them pop.
Contrast is always what makes our heads turn, our eyes turn, our hearts beat. And that’s the point to art, isn’t it?
Black and white have the same problems. They’re absolute colors that are really harsh statements in their full form. I almost never do a completely black or white object because they are so overwhelmingly strong and so flat. They overwhelm instead of fitting in.
I’ve worked on creating a white dimensional bird out of different pastels and greys. You can see the result on this post, Into White.
But would the same approach work with black? Instead of using tinted pale colors to create depth, use toned darker colors to create shades of black and greys? That’s what I’m going to try. I’ll take step by step photos so you can see if it works.
Indigo Blues
Have I ever done this one this before? Sort of. I’ve done black before, but when it comes to the contrast shades I’ve turned to purple and blues all of which because they were in my stash were a bit bright. The effect was essentially a purple and blue bird. It’s a fun art statement, but it wasn’t what I was aiming for. I really did want black.
I found this great drawing of a raven I did years ago. It fits into my birdfeeder series, so we’ll see what we get.
This turned out to be hard. I ordered the darkest threads in blue, grey, brown, and purple for it. When they arrived they did look ugly.
The other hard thing was telling which were darker. The tones were very close. I used my red, and green color filters and did the best I could to arrange them dark to light.
The real question is, is this a brown/black raven or a blue/black raven? I’ve tried to mix both blues and browns for a neutral black.
It’s not uncommon for this process for the stitching to be discouraging. It doesn’t look really impressive half way through. So I’ve taken step by step photos so you can see the change.
It didn’t work the way I expected. I was quite disappointed. Then I did what I had planned in the beginning. I used black metallic as my last color. The last color is always your strongest color and the one you will see the most.
The final thing that helps this out is the background. I’m using this piece of hand dye that pulls towards the brown/grey shades even with the yellow reds in it. The color of your fabric is the light source of your piece. This background echoes the brown/blue/black quality of the bird.
Is this a final answer? It is for this piece. I want to play more with it after I’ve had a color fix working on something bright and showy. All these neutral darks are depressing, but I think I got my bird where he should be. I think he needs to be flying over conifers. Maybe I do too.
Embroidered appliques rely on a drawing to start with. It’s always a moment when I take a deep breath and give it my best shot. I’m not good at drawing. I’m just stubborn enough to keep at it until I have something useful that I’m usually aiming for is a creature in motion. I hate still lifes because the last thing they seem to be is living. If it’s in motion, it’s live.
In a way this is another reason for free motion. The perfection you find in computerized embroidery doesn’t help us here. Being less regular, smooth and even make things more real and interesting.
I usually draw on Totally Stable, which is a fairly good thin drawing surface that irons on and tears away from the final embroidery surface. It does not erase well, but I usually trace my first drawing to clean it up and to get it going in the right direction. Since the drawing is my pattern on the back, it needs to be facing the opposite direction for the applique. I do make some adjustments for shrinkage. Check out my post Drawing on Distortion for a discussion on how to plan for that.
Is it moving already?
Of course we are talking about a two dimensional art form. How do you make it move? There are several good tricks.
If it’s walking, flying, crawling or stepping up, you’re already half way there.
Don’t make things symmetrical
If things are in dimension, one side is always a bit smaller than the other. Of course it helps if one side is moving differently than the other. But the closer side will have a bigger eye, hand, wing, claw or whatever. That’s how we’d perceive it in life.
Depend on angles
. Things either drawn with an angle or put on an angle give the illusion of motion because our mind tells us they are in motion. We expect gravity to be in play when we see something at an angle. It’s moving because in real life it would be moving.
The best reference book I know for this is The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. I’m not a big Disney fan, but Disney knows about creating images that flow and move from one frame to another. It’s not a cheap book but it’s one of the best.
So I draw things. And redraw them. And scratch out the lines I don’t like. And trace it once or twice. Until I have something that moves me and moves.
Some things are an experiment. Some things are a quest. Some things are like the holy grail and you keep searching for them interminably.
White is one of those things. When you’re working with thread painting, the easy answer is many shades of grey and then white, or many shades of beige and then white. Both are incredibly boring.
“Why couldn’t you just make it white?“ I hear you say. You could. If you want it to shine out stronger than any other element in the quilt and you don’t care about dimension, you could. Pure white can be like an out of place spotlight in a quilt.
So the quest is, what mix of colors, greys and beiges will make a white that will have good depth, cast and drama. And look like it’s white.
In that quest, I’ve done a step by step photo study on this bird, in hopes to study it.
I’ve talked about zoning and shading before so I won’t flog that in this blog. “Rethinking White” is a post about shading white applique flowers. It’s a bit different than totally building color in thread. Because it’s built on sheers instead of strictly thread. But you may find that a useful difference.
Dimension is made by arranging colors from either dark to light or light to dark. It builds the illusion of shape. The progression of colors creates shade and shadow.
Here is my thread range I chose. It’s a mix of blues, purples, greens greys and beige, laid out dark to light.
I’ve put together some process shots to help explain.
Head Shots
Dimension comes from having a dark, medium and light area in each color zone in your piece. If you can establish dark, medium and light, you can make depth, something that isn’t by nature flat. Then for interest’s sake I added a shocker and a shader color to spark it. Of course the beak and the eye bring it to life.
Changing Cast
The two things you are building are cast and dimension. Cast is the color under the color. Most colors either lead towards the sun or the shade. You get the clearest colors by using only sun or shade colors in an embroidery.
But sometimes clear color isn’t the goal. If you want to come to a neutral shade, you mix both. And try not to go too far from the center. It makes a fabulous blended shade, but it’s hard to accomplish.
The cast on the under feathers was more yellow than the rest of the bird. An over stitched layer of a bluer grey pulls the color closer to center.
White doesn’t have to be boring. Or grey, or beige. With a little thinking and a close eye we can create a blended white with dimension.
Sometimes it just doesn’t work. most of the time I can see it in my head. Except when I can’t tell until I get it up on the wall.
I was a bit unsure when I drew the bird. But he had great movement. I stitched it out anyway.
Two things happened. It shrank and that was a real problem. How much? I had a notion so I measured. Roughly 8.9 %. Doesn’t sound like much but it didn’t help. I’d used a yellow thread in the mix that didn’t make me happy. And I hated his legs. They just didn’t quite work.
But honestly it was just the wrong bird. Much happier with this drawing. Ignore the lines with squiggles. They are off. It will have to be drawn in reverse for the picture.
Years ago in college I made a stone wear red queen as a portrait of my mother. Trust me. It was appropriate. It blew up in the kiln.
Stubborn is just tenacious in a different dress. I built again and this time it survived the firing. Of course they put all my work after that in the firings where a woman did work that always blew up.
So I have an extra bird I don’t quite know where it goes. And a bird I love drawn ready to go. Not a big problem as these things go.
Sometimes it makes sense to settle. Sometimes it costs your heart and soul. I hope not to get in too big a hurry to hear myself. Or to work until it’s right.
Update:
Here is where that bird finished up. He’s so much better sized for these fish.
This is what happened with the second bird drawing. Boy, am I glad I refused to settle.
We’ve talked a lot about thread choices for one particular piece or another. But when you’re buying thread for a stash, what’s a good strategy? The notion that you need one of everything only works if you’re unbelievably rich. And if you’re faced with a thread chart or a whole display of thread it’s overwhelming anyway. Here’s some ideas about how to think about the threads you’ll really use. And some strategies for buying thread.
There are some threads where I really do need all the colors. I tend to have a whole sliver range because I stipple with it, and I can change the temperature across the piece by changing thread colors. Love that trick! I need all the colors there are.
Range gets defined several ways. Every color should have at least a dark, a medium and a light to shade with. You kind of can’t shade without that. Everything looks flat without.
It comes back to the color wheel. I want a range of everything. This helps check off the boxes. You may prefer darks, or tints or jewels. But it helps to have the wheel in front of you to make sure you have a bit of everything.
But there’s also differences in tone and tint. jewel color is just bright shades. Tone is darkened with black or brown. Tint is lightened. But mixing yellow greens and green yellows with some blue greens gives a more normalized green that is much richer. To get a good range, you want to go much darker, brighter and lighter than the color you want to achieve. I rarely do an embroidery with just light dark medium. It depends on the size. But for a large embroidery, I may use over 80 colors to mix what I want. You can’t use it if you don’t have it.
I put my go-to threads on the list every time. There are things I’m always running out of. Black polyester, FS Madeira 490, Black Supertwist, YLI Candelight Rainbow, certain shades of purple and green I use a lot for binding. If I know I’m going to use it a lot, it will probably trash me to run out of it. And I won’t want to wait for one thread to arrive. Don’t feel bad about ordering an extra spool if you just can’t run out of it. Your list may vary. Pay attention to favorites.
I keep a thread journal. As I run out of a spool of thread, I write down the color number so I can reorder it. I think I can keep that in my head but it really doesn’t work that way.
I make an inventory of whatever thread I’ve got first. When I’m working on a project everything gets garbled. I’ve recently bought a wall thread organizer, not for storage but for arranging threads for a project. But at the end of the day, odd colors go in the wrong bags, and I need to check to see what I’ve really got.
Threads on the right bottom are globbed on.
While I’m doing that, I pull out all the stepped on or smashed threads, almost empty threads, and really old stuff. Old thread is no bargain. It helps to seal thread in a plastic bag, but really old thread just breaks. You can probably use it in the bobbin easier than the top, in a pinch. But it’s not a pet. You don’t owe it anything. Although you can easily use it for globbing. Globbing applies thread in a glob on the surface of your quilt. It makes for beautiful foliage, swamp pond and river bottoms. For instructions on globbing, check out my post, Another Fine Mess: What’s on Your Floor
Bagging thread has another good use. I bag thread by colors mostly. All the blues, pale greens, dark greens, olive greens, reds, oranges, yellow oranges, pinks, purples, greys, teals, get their separate bag. That way I know if I have a range.
About white: Yes. Sometimes I really want white. But most of the time, it’s just too bright for the other colors around it. Instead try pale pastels or greys. White metallic is an exception. It is softer, so it doesn’t have such a high contrast, and that makes it much more usable. Make sure to use a complementary color in that pale mix for shadows. A pink bird probably wants soft green in the coloration.
Remember that colors always are in relationship with each other. The names are a verbal thing, and color is visual. So the names will fail us every time. Look at your colors in relationships with each other and with the background. The background fabric is the color of the light in your piece, so it sets the tone.
Don’t feel bad about having favorites. I love purple, so I buy more purple. I’ll find a way to use it because I love it. I have to make myself buy peach, but that’s ok. I probably have 10 purples to each peach, and that probably will work out in what I ordinarily choose for colors.
Try to pick your colors in decent light. I will do a blog about lighting soon, but you know what I mean. Lighting can change everything.
When I bought thread for students, I made the rule of light dark and medium shades in each color, extra black for outlining, and anything that struck me as marvelous eye candy. It’s not a bad rule. It usually worked. It’s candy without a calorie in sight.
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.
