I’ve been working on a koi fish quilt for a while. I wanted those heavily scaled koi with repetitive black background under orange-red scales. If it sounds easy, I’m saying it wrong.
This is a zoning issue. You have a black zone and a colored scale zone. They need to be crisply separated.
The gold standard approach is to make each scale separately, tie them off, and start the next one. By one. By one.
It does make a nice separation. It also asks the question, “How long do you expect to live?” It takes forever.
The other answer is to do one zone at a time and find a pathway through your stitching that makes the least mess getting from one spot to another. You need to find a stitching pattern.
It’s different every time. You want to cover the areas where you’re moving from one square to another with the smallest, least visible stitch.
What works best is the stitch moving your zigzag directly out from the side. You’ll get a straight line that later can be covered over. Or if it’s tiny enough, ignored.
I chose to take black thread afterward and clean up the image. This is half fixed, half not. I’m sure you can see the difference.
It’s always simpler to blend colors. But sometimes what you want is that crisp distinction between zones.
Remember when I said I needed to calm down the mockingbird quilt I’ve been working on? The background was pretty wild. I don’t quite know what to do with deserts. so I don’t know when I’ve gone over the top.
But I do know how to put out a visual firestorm. You go for the complementary color. The eye gets excited by all that contrast, but it cools off all that flaming color blaze.
With all that red, the complement is green. Which means cactus.
I’m not a cactus person. I’m not a desert person. So I’ve spent a week looking at pictures and identifying how I want to make cactus. It’s all about the texture, so it’s all about the stitchery, which means it’s all about the angle of the stitch.
We’ve talked about stitch angles a lot. The Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book has an explanation of that you might find helpful. Moving straight through the machine gets us a hard thick line. Moving out from side to side creates shading. Moving through with an angle gets us a curved line. Here is a link to the blog about Zigzag Stitching.
Straight stitching in spirals creates textures on paddle cactus. The outside is shaded with an outline on the angle, stitching side to side to shade, and some straight-through smoothing.
I used a spikey shading headed upwards to give the feel of rough texture, and used straight stitch for the spines.
This has been a counter-productive week. My leg went out ( still not sure why), and I’ve had some low-grade flu. So my studio work didn’t happen. Instead, I worked a bit in my library.
When I married Don and moved, I stripped my library down. I have several libraries. One is for personal information and entertainment. Small kitchen library. And a pile of art books. Somehow that has continued to grow.
Where does our art come from? We’d like everything to be completely out of ourselves. I’m not sure that’s possible.
We have several illusions about art. We’d like to believe all art is original. But it’s not. Art comes from our response to other images. All art is in some way derivative. Different pieces of art hold a conversation over time. Art changes how other art is made.
We are told only artists are artists. That’s just wrong. Art is not unique to artists. It’s a part of our genome. It’s the ability to view our world differently. In our view of the world, we begin to change our world. when we work with those images, we change ourselves, and that changes the world. Just a little bit. It’s the creation of sense, beauty, and order. We have to silence the voice that says we are not artists. Because it’s the voice that tells us we can’t. Because it strips us of power that has always been our own.
So how do we kick start art? We need to feed our eyes and refuse to hamstring ourselves. What our senses bring gives us all kinds of inspiration.
But back to art being derivative: We work with the images that set us on fire, move our inners, pop out our own eyes or perhaps someone else’s. And there is never any reference like a book. The zoo is closed. The science program moves too fast. The web pictures are tiny. Your own library is a wide world portal that never closes; Not even at three am.
So I look for books with enough animal pictures to know how many toes a frog has and what angle the leg is at. I look for landscape books, garden books. pet books, pictorial archives, amazing art artists, and how-to techniques. And beautiful kid books.
I love my library. It fills my eyes. it fills my head. It fills my life.
I jus made myself bookplates for the Galesburg address. This is sneaky. I get to open every book, if nothing else but to put the plate in.
Take your inspiration where you find it, but build up inspiration where it waits for you, like treasure in heaven.
For some while, I’ve bound my quilts with a buttonhole binding. It’s a buttonhole with a cord inside. At first, I wanted to accommodate a leaf or a frog leg coming out of the piece. Then I wanted to bust out in all kinds of places.
I wrote this 4 years ago. It’s pretty good instruction but it leaves out something I thought was obvious at the time.
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.
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)Â that has exactly the right thread escape to accommodate the buttonhole binding
You’ll need
#3 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 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 makes things so much more difficult.
Attaching the cord:
Set your machine on a zigzag stitch, with the needle placed one position over from full left. 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 ruffles at the edge, you can pull the cord and gather in the ruffle. This will not solve severe distortion problems, but it will fix minor ones. You should 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.”
This was my original article, four years ago. Here’s the secret ingredient I didn’t think to factor in. Almost all of the shapes going off the edge. What I forgot to say, is that almost all of the items going over the edge have been embroidered to a fare-the-well. That means they have 2 other layers of stitch and tear and felt. They can literally stand up of their own accord.
It does make a difference. And I hate to be someone who will give you a recipe with something essential left out.
I am excited to make quilts that are exactly the shape they should be. None of that square for the sake of square stuff.
There are people who tell me they can plan a quilt. They make drawings. They decide what they’re going to do. And that’s what they do.
Personally, I’m in awe. I can design until I’m blue. Somewhere in the middle, the quilt lets me know what it needs. And I need to follow that down whatever road it leads me down.
I fell in love with this mockingbird image. But it’s off my map a bit. Once I got it embroidered, I realized it was strictly a desert bird.
I don’t do desserts. I’m a water creature. I live in moonlight and water. But this is a bird full of sun and fire.
So I went looking for a background. I happened to have some purple behind the piece of orange I put up. And it had the bright green aura of cactus in it. The purple added a night and day element.
I needed to decide on plants. If I were to do anything it had to be cactus.
You can tell the fact that I don’t think in terms of deserts when I tell you I had nothing to make cactus and desert from. I had to dye more greens.
Which is when I found these wonderful pictures of owls in cactus.
So now I’m making owl heads. I need to do them before I make the cactus so I can make holes and fit them in.
One decision leads to another. I can’t make one until I’ve made that. Then new questions get asked and new things get included. If I think I’m in charge, I’m delusional.
But I believe in my art. I believe in what it demands. I am its servant. And I am willing to listen to what it would like me to do next.
This week I painted a batch of lace and organza. I love using these soft laces because they offer texture and shifting color as another overlay on the surface.
These are not especially elegant laces. The organza is plain poly organza. I often find them in rummage sales. I hit the jackpot at some point when I bought a pile of remanents from a wedding seamstress.
Painting lace is easy. I use acrylic paints from Walmart or Joann’s and mix them with fabric media (available at Amazon) to make the hand of the fabric better. Mix in a little extra water until the paint is the consistency of cream, and paint the lace with sponge brushes. It’s a lovely, messy wildly colored afternoon. You let it dry completely and iron it on a synthetic heat setting.
I’ve heard a lot of people argue for the real thing. Silk organza. Real lace. I love those things too, but it’s not about fiber content. It’s about color, transparency, translucency, and texture. And it’s about whether they work well under the needle and as applique. It helps to know the content so you don’t burn it under the iron.
There’s a short story by Henry James called The Real Thing. It’s about an artist who has a noble couple offer themselves as models. They argue that they are the real thing and that they will add accuracy to his work as his models. But the truth is, he finds the woman who is his ordinary model from a humble and somewhat criminal life could be anything: a gypsy, a fairy, a queen, a courtesan, or a saint. And since she can be anything, she makes his artwork ultimately real.
Painted lace is a test tube baby, made of nylon and polyester. But it creates a wonderful surface overlay. And I really don’t care how real it is.
So, if you know of anyone who is rehoming white poly lace and organza, let me know. I finally used up my stash.
It’s always nice to find a new use for an old tool. I’ve loved oil paint sticks for years. I use them for fabric rubbings and find them an exciting way to design.
I’d pulled some out for a friend who had come to the studio for a visit. They were still on my table, and as I went to put them away, I thought about lace and organza.
painted organza
I’ve painted lace before. Almost all the lace I’ve worked with has been polyester or nylon, so you had to paint it with acrylic paint, the kind that comes in little bottles at Joann’s and Walmart. You mix the paint with water and with fiber medium. Then you can paint it with sponge brushes. The effect is a soft spread of colors with a kind of plastic-like hand, that you can iron, and iron on things.
It’s pretty. But it’s always pastel. You know how I feel about pastels. Yes, there’s a reason for them. I still have to be talked into it.
So I thought about a white piece of lace I bought a while back at a garage sale, and painted bits of it with oil paint stick.
Tips for Working with Oil Paint Stick
Use a sheet of freezer paper to protect your table,.
Peel off the skin on the paint stick with a potato peeler.
Peeling along the long side of the paint stick gives a wider brush stroke.
They can be rubbed against a surface and blended with each other.
The differences are stunning. Both are cool, but in very different ways.
Oil Paint Stick
Has incredible bright color
Won’t spill
Uses up quite a bit of paint for one piece
Takes time to dry
Doesn’t need brushes
Cleans up with Goop or Go Jo
Only paints on one sided
Sets with a hot iron
Acrylic Painted Lace
Paints up with sponge brushes
Drip dries within a couple hours.
Sets with a hot iron.
Pastel to moderate color
Will I use them both. Of course! I love using sheers, and colored sheers give me a way to shift the color of my quilt surface. Having a bright option instead of just a pastel one is a big present under the tree.
Hand dye with oil paint stick lace overlay
I’m working on an ibis that needs a small pond from above and some clouds. New shaded grey/blue/beige laces might be what that needs. I love new toys!
I hope you will forgive a tech blog today. I’ve been unable to reach the studio for several days this week and I don’t have the normal weeks’ process to show you.
While I was working on all those silk leaves I added a candle to my studio.
Don was appalled. And he’s right. Fabric and fire don’t mix.
But fire does bring everything to its elements.
Silk leaves aren’t silk. They’re usually polyester of some sort. I can’t bring myself to care about that. They’re too pretty.
I was cutting the leaves apart to make smaller leaves. Of course, on the better quality leaves they heat the edges so they melt a little and don’t fray. I set up a candle to melt the edges of the parts I cut.
Boy, does polyester burn. Really fast, too. I set my candle in a container, put the candle into a tray of water, and ran the leaf edges through the flames. If they started to burn, I could drop the leaves into the water as a safety thing. You can hold the leaves with tweezers, but you still can’t control them once they start to burn. Being poly, they drip dry with their edges fused. If they blacken a bit, it makes them even more like fall leaves.
The same setup for this makes it safe to burn test fabric as well.
Burn testing has been around forever. It’s hard to tell fibers just by feel. Even if you’re very experienced. If you burn a small sample you can tell at once a lot about the fiber the fabric is made from.
Cotton burns to a soft fine white ash. Rayon burns black but also has a soft ash. Wool stinks like burnt hair. Polyester usually melts to a hard black edge. Nylon melts to a hard white edge. Silk burns to a hard crunchy edge.
It’s not foolproof, but it does tell you the most important thing about fiber. Is it plant, animal, or vegetable? Why does that matter?
It answers questions: will it dye? Will it fade? Will it shrink? Will it melt? You don’t need precision for that. You need to know if it’s synthetic or natural.
Synthetics, nylon, or poly will melt. They won’t shrink, bleed or fade. But they can’t be dyed except with dyes, especially for them.
Cotton, linen, bamboo, and rayon are all plant fibers. They dye beautifully with fiber-reactive dyes. But they may shrink, bleed, and fade.
Wool and silk are animal fibers. They can be dyed with certain dyes. They also shrink, bleed, and fade.
As they say, knowledge is power. Most of the time there’s a content listed on the bolt. Except when there isn’t, or it comes to you as a scrap. If you know what your fabric will do, you know how best to use it.
The same method I used for burning leaves, works with a burn test. A candle in a tray of water makes it safe. If it gets out of control you just drop it into the water.
Stay safe wherever you are! The snow has to melt sometime.
I work a lot with embroidered appliques. These are embroidered separate pieces I can apply to the surface of my piece. Because they’re separate, they don’t distort the piece as much, and they can be moved endlessly until you stitch them down.
I discovered several working hacks for applique rescue doing this. A 2-foot lily pad takes up way too much space to have as a double layer. It’s just too bulky, and I wanted to stitch frogs to the lily pads which would have made a very dense surface.. I’d heard about cutting out behind appliques, but I hadn’t tried it before. It worked quite well. I was able to stitch down my frogs without an extra layer of felt, stabilizer, embroidery, and hand dye. I was worried about the integrity of the piece, but once it was stitched and trimmed, it was quite stable.
This works if you’re sure of what you have designed. What if you stitch it down and change your mind? Artists call this pentimenti. The artist chooses something and changes their mind. On a painting, it would be a layer underneath with different images. On fiber art, it’s a series of small holes where you ripped something out.
This was a week of set backs. I’ve been working on finishing the purple heron. When I get towards the end, I sometimes make decisions I regret.
This happened with my purple heron this week. I was working with some larger lily pads than I usually do, and I put them in first before the heron. In between the heron and the lily pads were the butterflies. When I finally got the heron stitched in, the butterfly was way too close and personal.
Removing an applique is a drastic thing to do. It’s been stitched down with a free-motion zigzag stitch that is quite dense. I’ve done it with a mustache trimmer. I also love my surgical scalpels. That’s what I used here. You can cut through the stitch on the backside. I have a layer of protective felt and stabilizer between that and the front.
But be prepared for holes. I hoped the needle holes would shrink when I steamed the piece. Not enough.
Here’s another rescue. A roll of tape can remove a lot of excess thread after ripping out.
Not to worry about the holes. I got out some left-over spirals and placed them in a design where the hole was. What hole? After that, I replaced my butterfly in a better spot.
Here it is fixed. I need to stipple in the water next.
,Does it happen to me? Of course, it does. Rather regularly. But it isn’t what goes wrong with a piece of art that defines it. It’s what you do after to fix it.
