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.
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.
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.
