Dancing in the Light This ladybug is done in Bobbin Work in #8 hand dyed pearl cotton and # 8 metallic thread.
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 other?
How do you do the bblack 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.
Sidewalk Conversation How do I make concrete?
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.
Here my ladybug is cut from oriental brocade, fused with Steam a Seam 2; and free motion embroidered with #40 poly thread. But I hadn’t tried placing it directly on Angelina film.
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?
How does one gracefully leave your leaf chair?
Do I find repetition boring? NO! I find repetition changes 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.
I know some people who meticulously plan their quilts. I envy them. They draw them out on cocktail napkins or in a notebook, or a design wall. And it doesn’t change. They have a straight line vision and if they were in a boat you’d say they were rowing to the shore.
I’m just not one of them. I walk into the studio, look at what I’m working on and the squirrel process begins. You know what I mean. I see one thing and it makes me think of something else in a bin somewhere that I know is perfect except that I ran into something even better when I moved a pile over and I found something left over from another quilt.
Elements from Butterfly Barden
Grotto Gem is one of the left over bits from Butterfly Garden. It didn’t quite work with the others but it was magic but itself.
Let’s just say it’s like treasure hunting. There isn’t a map, just the memory of the myth. I’m in a boat roaring down the river without a paddle. I cling to the side and whats where the river of creativity takes me.
Somewhere I have the perfect butterfly, bird, frog, mushroom, name your critter, waiting to go into that new quilt. All I have to do is dig deep enough for it.
In the brand new studio? Are there piles in the brand new studio? Already?
OF COURSE THERE ARE.
I’ve gotten quite precious about left over bits. And I produce them in bulk. If I decide to do mushrooms I am likely to do ten of them when I only need two.
Stag Party
Why?
It’s process. Left over mushrooms in the studio are not different than left over mushrooms in the refrigerator. Did you fry them with bacon and sherry? You know full well theyll go into the next casserole seamlessly.
But its easier to do them in a lump. The machines are all set a certain way, for free motion applique, or for bobbin work, or for zigzag embroidery. The backgrounds are on thin felt, hand dye and stitch and tear. And I’ll have a basket of the thread colors I want to feature. And rather than make two mushrooms for a quilt, I’ll make ten just to have the left overs, waiting for their time on another quilt. It’s also in an organized set of colors. Mushrooms on another day may not feature neon orange, but I always reserve the possibility. They make a collection of mushrooms that go with each other, and that is useful again and again.
I’m going to show you some quilts, some done and some not finished, that were left overs to start with.
In the Reeds 2
This back and this fish sat in the same bag for years. I took out the background and the fish fell onto it. What can a girl do?
I purposely made way too many moths for this owl. The owl is from a quilt that simply didn’t work. They’re both in process.
But one of the moths found it’s way into Stag Party, and I have two more pinned into another quilt.
Ladybug Rising
This aggressively pink background sat in the suitcase until this ladybug came along.
My point is that extras are part of pulling creation forward. They move on the conversation of what you’re working on, into other work, which asks other things of you. They are a natural part of studio work, which is the training of your art.
And your art is a precocious child who needs love, permission, more crayons and free time to find her way. Celebrate it all. Especially the leftovers that start up the process.
Knowing the definition of a word is a pinpoint on a map. It tells you where you are. It doesn’t tell you how to get where you want to go. It’s the rawest of beginnings.
In the same way, color theory feels like the the dreariest driest subject in the catalog of art education. We look at the wheel and say the canticle, red and blue make purple, red and yellow make orange…. It feels like a recitation from kindergarten. And sadder still, it’s not always true. We’ve all mixed yellow and blue to get the most grizzly browns. It feels like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. A nice story for children.
Part of what we’re missing with that is the reality that it’s a theory. It works, simply when it does work and when it doesn’t, we need to explore why. That’s mostly about imperfect color. Color me surprised. So many things are imperfect in a imperfect world.
But the real question is not where we are on the map but where can we go. What color theory really describes is the relationships between colors. Within the color wheel, the spots within that wheel define the same kinds of relationships between different colors. Those relationships go back to that primary list of monochromatic, complementary, and analogous color themes that seem so very dull. Because they define the tension between colors.
The distance between colors, creates the pull across the wheel. The closer they are to each other, the least pull. The least tension. The least excitement.
The farthest distance any color combination has is directly across from each other, as complements. Those are combinations that tug and pull and electrify us. Colors right on top of each other are smooth and slide into each other.
It’s not one combination. It’s a circle of combinations that create the same feeling. We can move the circle endlessly and get the same energetic result.
Daylily ?Dance
Daylily Dance goes all around the color circle with neutral gray blocks as an inner/outer framework. The relationship of each complementary pair, kicks it over the moon color wise.
How does that change in thread in stead of fabric? Fabric is macro. It’s large strokes of color. Thread gives us micro choices. But the relationships on the color wheel stay stable and chart our color choices. We know from where the colors are on the wheel, how they will make our art feel.
Zizgag applique is the fussiest thing I do. This is the most time consuming thing I do. Every so often I tell myself it’s too much work. It’s endless layers of stitching
So why do I always come back to it? I remind myself that nothing else looks like it. There are a number of reasons. Poly and rayon threads are incredibly beautiful. The grain of thread stitching leads itself to very tiny dashes of color that the eye blends on it’s own.
Eye of the moth’s wing
The process is one layer of color on top of another, in zigzag stitching. It takes forever.
The threads I’m using are a 40 or 30 weight thread. That means if you laid 40 threads side by side, they would measure one inch. They are very lightweight, but it allows us to stitch over and over the piece.
The thread color choices are almost unlimited. If feels like having a box of one thousand crayons. I actually added up what was on the chart of Madeira Poly Neon and found it was only 600. I don’t feel gypped.
Will other 40/30 weight threads work? Absolutely. Rayon too. I just wanted to show you how extensive the choices are.
Madeira Poly Neon thread. My favorite go to.
Color charts always amaze me. But they really don’t tell us very much. They’re raw material like a shopping list. What matters is what we do with them. The choice of thread colors is a lecture on it’s own. I’ll spend several blogs with you talking about why I use the colors I do and where. I’ll also give a short tutorial on zigzag embroidery, zoning a pattern, and placing it into a quilt.
‘Both owl and bug are zigzag embroidered applique in poly and rayon threads.
We’ll go behind the technique and explain the color choices in some future blogs. Follow along and I’ll show you what I can do with a thousand crayons.
