I finished four quilts this week. Partially for the joy of it, Partially to fill the time.
Swirling Leaves
Butterfly Pond
Ginko Butterfly
Heron Pond
Heron Pond Detail
My body is betraying me. I have an infection in my replaced knee and we’re going to have to clean it out, let it heal and replace the knee. It’s a three month process.
Can I quilt? I don’t know. The question is, can I walk into the car and the studio. We’ll find out. We don’t know.
I hate the words, ‘We don’t know.’
What I know is that time forced away from your creative flow doesn’t stop it. It finds a way. Through quilts, through words, through my hands, through my dreams, through my prayers.
We came back from the surgeon who told us that instead of doing surgery now, we need to wait until January 19th. More we don’t know. And waiting for the covid vaccine.
If you’re a praying person pray. If not spare me a good thought. I guess the first trial is the wait. Thanks!
This is the story of two quilts that got made. I made the components of both of them at theame time, so they aren’t the same quilt, but their process is connected.
A large part of how quilts get made is that there are components. They’re made separately so they can go anywhere, and they do.
I had two pieces of fabric, left over from my teaching days, They both had that glowing pink red thing going on. I had fallen in love with the little lacy praying mantises and I wanted to put it into one of those pieces. And I always love sapsucker bugs.
But which piece? They were both beautiful. They were already backed and ready to be worked on for design. As I often do, I worked as if it could be either. I made my bug components.
Did I make extras? I always do! It’s like left overs in the kitchen. It’s something yummy you don’t have to work on now, because you have it right there, in your kitchen, ready to eat. I think I made 6 sapsucker bugs, thinking they would all go on one quilt. That didn’t work out that way, for which I am glad.
But why bugs? I often have people who want to know why I do nature quilts. Actually, technically I don’t, always. I’m never a slave to reality. Why are there all those bugs? There’s a couple of answers to those questions, but people aren’t always comfortable with those answers.
Gaham Wilson wrote an hysterical book of comics called I Paint What I See. For all the viewer can see there’s nothing there. But the artist sees what they see. What else can they paint?
It’s true. Every artist paints what they see. All of my life I’ve seen people as animals. Often as bugs. Not in a negative way. I love my bugs. But it’s what I see. I quilt what I see.
The other uncomfortable truth is that I am in no way in charge of my art. It demands things of me and I try to comply. But once I understand something, I can see that the quilt is about something that is about to happen in my life. They are predictive.
So when I found myself wrangling with the bank later that week, I thought of my very confident praying mantis, standing tall among the flowers, able to take on all comers. That’s the other uncomfortable truth. My quilts tell me who I am, what is coming, and that I am brave enough.
Then again, as an artist, am I in charge of people’s comfort? Art changes how we see things. If we are faithful to our work, art changes our perceptions of ourselves. I’m not about to do sad-eye puppy quilts, so everyone will have to get used to that.
Whenever we see a living creature, we want to see its eyes. We speak of eyes as windows to the soul. But they are also the focus of the face, the place our eyes search for first.
So how to we make eyes stand out? It turns out all those Visine adds are right. Shiny wet eyes immediately command our attention. So, if we want our eyes to show off, we want them to shine. Here’s some easy ways to do that.
Metallic threads come in several different forms. There are wrapped and twisted threads. And then there is a flat metallic thread that is as shiny as Christmas tinsel. Sulky Sliver, and Superior Glimmer are good examples.
These threads really shine! They’re not easy necessarily to use. I usually stitch them from the back like bobbin work. A zigzag garnet stitch makes a beautiful wet shiny eye. Pick a color for the iris, add black for the pupil and an iridescent white makes an electric eye spark.
Of course that’s not the only way. Shiny lame and brocade can make a great eye too. These don’t have the iridescent spark.
These do.
Another thread that makes an exciting eye is Madiera’s bug body. This black and metallic twisted thread stitches up to look like beading. The turquoise iris rim here is stitched from that.
And finally, there’s always beads. Nothing wrong with that.
We think of free motion as a straight stitch. But free motion zigzag stitch offers us an ability to detail and shape an applique as if we were shading it with a pencil. If we use black thread, it looks exactly like a shaded sketch.
Simple shapes cut out of oriental brocade and fused to black felt with Steam a Seam 2 make the form of this ladybug.
I’m using some simple zigzag directional stitching to shape the outlines, shadings and the smoothing between them. Straight through creates a wide zigzag, like an applique stitch. Stitching on a 45 degree angle gives me an outline. Moving side to side creates a shading stitch.
I’ve outlined the head and created a segment through the back to create depth.
Shading along the edges and smoothing gives the image a rounded shaped appearance.
Instead of drawing spots on the red brocade, I outlined the segments in black, shaded them and smoothed them. Again, it makes a nicely plump ladybug.
She’s all embroidered here.
Here’s what the back looks like. It really does make a pencil sketch.
Number 40 weight black polyester thread does all the shading , just like a pencil.
Here are three of these bugs, in a possible background. Endless shade and shadow, just with black thread and a zigzag stitch.
I started out as a traditional quilter. And for years I bound all my quilts with bias tape. But as my work became more organic, it felt terribly strange to put my work in a square box.
The corded buttonhole is a standard technique from couture sewing. Translated from there to the quilt world, it gives us a way to finish both quilts and art clothing in a new way that’s literally out of the box. Instead of the square edges and gentle curves that are the limit of bias binding, we have the freedom to follow any shape. That means that the edge of our pieces is not defined by straight lines, but by their internal design. It also means a quilt can have an external shape that fills a wall in a much more exciting way. And because our binding is thread, we have the full range of polyester thread colors for our palette.
I prefer to do this on my Bernina because of the specific feet and the stitch quality. You can use a regular utility foot and a couching foot off another kind of machine.
We’ll be using two basic feet for our binding.
#1 foot
#3 fppt front
#3 Foot bottom
What largely counts is the thread escape on the bottom of the foot.
The #1 foot has a top groove we can use to couch down the cord. The #3 foot has a thread escape groove on the bottom for the zigzag stitching to pass through. The #3 foot is the older style buttonhole foot (without the electronic eye)that has exactly the right thread escape to accommodate the buttonhole binding .
You’ll need
#10 Crochet cotton
A quilt/ or quilted object backed, quilted and ready to bind
Polyester #30-40 weight embroidery thread the color of your choice
A#3 foot and a #1 foot
A Bernina
A rotary cutter and mat
Binding
We’ll bind our piece with a corded binding that’s basically a corded buttonhole all around the edge.
Preparing your quilt:
Stitch around the edge either with monofilament nylon or with a neutral embroidery thread so that all the layers are together
Using your rotary cutter, cleanly cut away all the extra bat and backing fabric, exactly the shape you want your quilt to be.
You don’t have to have a square. It can be any shape at all. To keep sharp 45 degree corners or points, you need to clip the tips off them.
Thread your machine top and bottom with a polyester embroidery thread that you want for the color of your binding. You can use rayon or metallic thread, but the breakage tends to make things so much more difficult.
Attaching the cord:
Set your machine on a zigzag stitch, with the needle position one position over from full right. Your stitch length should be at between the button hole setting at a # 4 width.
Position your quilt so the stitch falls just over the right hand edge of your quilt.
Start your stitching somewhere in the lower edge, not on a corner or direct curve.
Zigzag your cording all around the edge.
When you come to the end, drop your feed dogs and make several stitches to anchor the cord.
Clip your threads and cord.
Tip: If you have a quilt that is ruffling at the edge just a bit, you can pull the cord and gather in the ruffle. This will not solve severe distortion problems, but it will fix minor ones. You need to pull the cord before you change directions or turn a corner.
Covering the cord:
Your second pass should cover your cord with smooth zigzag stitching.
You’ll find certain areas may not have been included in the stitching. This will give you a chance to address that.
Set your sewing machine for the widest stitch it will give, and the densest stitch length it can handle. Put your needle position to the far right.
Use your #3 foot, with the double channel thread escape.
Position your quilt so that the stitch to the right ends over the edge of your quilt
Start at a lower edge, not on a corner or a curve.
Stitch around the edge of your quilt.
When you come to the beginning, move your needle position to the far left, set onto a straight stitch and stitch in place to anchor the stitching.
Sometimes I get enough coverage on the second pass, but that’s rare. Usually it takes a third time around. Turn the piece over. If you still have wisps sticking up through the binding, trim them as best you can, and go around another time.
Corners, curves and points:
These all take a bit of finesse. Your standard button hole stitch isn’t set up to cover them. But you can get good coverage on them by rocking your stitch over them. As you’re stitching, you can pull back just a bit from the front to make sure your stitch line covers everything. Curves may also need that assist. For corners and particularly for points stitch up to them and turn the piece at slightly different angles as you go round the edge. You can put the needle down within the point and pivot and stitch several times until you have coverage.
Tips:
A clean cut edge to your piece is always easier to cover with stitching. Use your rotary cutter and make a nice solid cut line.
Use a new topstitching #90 needle for the best stitch and for less thread breakage.
Sewers aid applied to the thread also helps with thread breakage.
Organic quilts don’t have to be stuck in a box. A corded buttonhole binding lets your quilt go over the edge.
When I finish a quilt, there’s this awkward sigh of relief, then this restlessness. And then I go scramble around in my unfinished quilt pile. I’m not really comfortable with finishing. I’d rather dink along at length until I’m really bored with it or until I have a deadline, whichever comes first.
So I pull out my pile of unfinished quilts
Bugs in Bloom
I’m not one of those people who feels they must finish every quilt. Not every quilt works the way you want it to. Sometimes you learn much more from a quilt you don’t want or need to finish. It’s all an experiment of a sort. I don’t believe there is shame in not finishing a quilt you don’t like.
But sometimes something that got backshelved really is worthy and I just need to get back to it.
All Time is Spiral in a Garden
I had an urge to play with sapsucker bugs.
I love these. They’re made with two tear drop shape.
And if you do it right the same shapes that make the bugs will also make the flowers.
I found two pieces I’d played with a bit in class. They both were perfect for the bugs and blooms so which should I choose?
I’m still not sure. But while I was at it, I cut pieces for a praying mantis to go with them. Here she is just as raw fabric.
And here she’s fleshed out with most of her stitching.
I’m not there yet with this. I’ll show you more about the decision on backgrounds in another post. My point is that the process of going through the left overs brings me to new and old ideas both. I may have to try it with the refrigerator next.
We’ve talked about how elongated quilts are already in motion, just because of their shape. But how do you make a square quilt move? One easy way to do it is to design a moving shape inside the square
All Time is Spiral in a Garden
A spiral is a visually moving shape that fits easily into a square.
Flying Rose
Here the rose is constructed out of spiral shapes of sheers, twisted in among each other.
Even just a thin spiral vine can energize this group of dragonflies.
Silent Splendor
Sometimes the spiral is in the stitching.
Sometimes it’s in a leaf.
Moth Mandela
Sometimes it’s just ordered shapes.
But a spiral anywhere will help carry the viewer’s eye across the surface of the quilt.
Have you ever made a bunch of samples only to find them under the sewing machine table with the glue gun over them? It can happen. Ask me how I know.
I’ve been there. We’ve all been there. This is a little trick I’ve used to keep these things together in a way that works for me.
I make a number of samples, all the same size, make sure they’re stabilized, write on the sample itself any setting or stitch information I need and bind the samples into a small fabric book I can put on my shelf.
I recently got a flower foot. It’s a very cool foot that stitches in circles, and is well worth a blog on it’s own. I did a sample book for it and thought it might be a trick worth sharing.
But I’ve done these also with students in class. We work one skill per page and write on the stabilizer everything you want to remember.
When you have a collection of samples that all are on the same subject, sew them together on one side and take a small piece of bias tape and bind the seam. You’ll have a small permanent cloth book you can put with your references for when you need it.
Several Tips
Use a stiff interfacing you can iron on your pages. It will help your stitches and make your book easier to work with and read. I use a 9 inch square most often. I make them from the same fabric I use to dye my fabric or sometimes from the same fabric I’ve used for the quilt.
Use a pen that you can read on fabric. I had no luck with Sharpies, but a gel pen worked great. Experiment and use what works best.
Trim your pages so they’re the same size.
Stitch your pages down with a straight stitch.
I use left over bias for my binding, but you could use a straight strip as well, I suppose.
You could also keep samples you’ve used testing out fabric and thread for quilts you’re working on so you have a record of your choices.
It’s always great to document information you need. I hope this give you a new way to do this.
I know paint sticks are old news. But I really didn’t get it the first time around. Did I buy them? YES! did I know how to use them? Not so much. Was I disappointed? I was devastated.
The premise is that you take oil paint sticks and rub them on fabric with a design rubbing plate. Simple. Not so much. Everything slid all over the place and I made a special mess. Like many things, it went under the heading of “Well, I tried.”
It was several years later when I walked into a booth full of oil paint sticks and I told the lady I had failed. She said the words I longed to hear. “You’re doing it wrong.”
There is nothing as lovely, if not also annoying as knowing there’s a better way to do something that will make it work for you.
I love oil paint sticks, particularly the metallic ones. Glowing lovely color on hand dyed fabric with texture, what’s not to like. These Shiva Oil Paint Sticks are from Amazon.
The rubbing plates come from a lot of sources. My favorites are from the Cedar Creek. They have numerous kinds and sizes. Again you can find them at Amazon.
Here’s the secret hand shake. You have to keep the plates from moving around on you. There are two tools to do that.
The Grip-n-Grip Mat: Use this 14 x 11 inch rubber mat to hold the rubbing plate on so it wont wander under your fabric while you are rubbing.
Use 505 Spray on the rubbing plate itself so the fabric doesn’t move on you.
Basic Tips:
Peel the oil paint stick to get to fresh wet paint with a potato peeler. The surface of the stick will dry after your’re done and protect the paint stick.
Secure the rubbing plate on the grip mat and spray the rubbing plate with the 505 spray. Place the fabric on top. The fabric can be removed but it won’t slide around.
Gently rub the oil stick over the surface of the fabric. Feel free to mix colors.
Let the fabric air dry for at least 24 hours. When it’s dry to the touch, you can iron it with a paper towel as a pressing cloth to set the color.
You can clean up with Goop, the cream you find in the car care section for cleaning oil off hands.
Artifact: Wind over Water
These are done on hand dyed fabrics. They create something like a batik look, but with ultimate control. The metallic colors absolutely gleam.
I’ve discovered I can stitch into the oil paint stick rubbing with metallic thread for extra shine.
920 Artifacts: Dragonfly 4
Don’t be afraid to try something that didn’t work once for you! It may be there’s a secret handshake you just need to know.
