technique

Physical techniques used in making a quilt

Rethinking Stabilizers: What’s on the Inside?

| ellenanneeddy
Clematis Moon in Process

Free motion embroidery has been the most exciting tool I’ve ever had. But it has it’s secrets. Yes, it’s about thread, and stitch quality and hoops. But the secret heart of free motion embroidery is what’s inside. Stabilizer creates the best foundation.

These moths are embroidered on felt, Stitch and Tear, and Totally Stable. The images are all thread.

I’ve been revisiting the stabilizers I use for Free Motion Applique. The stabilizer sandwich I used to use consisted of Totally Stable, hand dyed fabric, and a tight hoop.

I also used to do most of my embroidery on my piece. Lately I make more and more of my elements separately.

I’ve also started embroidering just on felt, leaving the hand dye fabric out of the sandwich.

Why have I changed?

Because stabilizers change, And because I want different things from my work. I’ve seen my work be more incrusted and wanted it to be a bit lighter, less distorted. Separate embroideries allow me to cure by cutting. I can cut off the bits that are distorted by too much stitching.

I’ve also changed my layering.

I’ve lately come to an appreciation of felt. When felt was made of wool, it was an exquisite fabric. When they made it of rayon and poly, not so much. It pulled apart when you looked at it. Now that it’s made of acryllic, it’s strong, embroiderable and unravellable. It can be stitched to the very edge and cut to the very edge. I now use felt instead of batt.

These flowers were made of sheers stuck on with Steam a Seam 2 and backed with felt and Stitch and Tear. No Totally Stabile, because my fabric makes my pattern for me.

But I also use it in my appliques. If I’m using a sheer for the basis of the applique, I use felt and Stitch and Tear as a stabilizer. If I am just making an applique of stitching, I use a pattern made from Totally Stable, a paper like stabilizer with a freezer paper that can be ironed down, stuck on, and then removed.

Leaving the names alone, what am I looking for in a stabilizer?

I’m looking for several abilities and responses in my stabilizers:
Does it iron on?
Does the glue texture show through?
Does the color show through?
Does it make a good drawing surface for a pattern?
Can I remove it afterwards?
Does it tear away or must I cut it away?
How stiff is it once it’s stitched?
Can I cover the edging cleaning with stitchery?

Those are some of the questions that help me decide whether a stabilizer will work for me.

Will I always use what I use now? I doubt it. Right now it’s giving me more stitchery with less weight. Stabilizers will change and I’ll roll with the changes.

The Miracle of Cheesecloth: Not Just for Turkey Anymore

| ellenanneeddy

I love sheers! I love the ability to have my background peak through the sheers to create the connection between background and an object.

But most sheers don’t paint or dye well. They are poly or nylon. They come in bright colors, but they have other problems. You can paint them in pastels. They don’t dye with fiber reactive dyes at all. And if you get your iron temperature wrong, they melt.

But cheesecloth does all that well! It’s all cotton, and woven loosely. And you can iron it on fry and it behaves like cotton.

You know cheesecloth. You just aren’t used to it in the sewing room. It’s an airy woven cotton people used to use to make cheese (hence the name). Or on turkies to keep the breast moist. You may have used it to make Halloween ghosts or Christmas angels.

But dyed, it can be any color in the universe. I include it in a regular dye batch and it dyes like a champ with fiber reactive dyes. And it washes out easily in your regular washer in a nylon lingerie bag.

It makes amazing leaves! The weave in the cheesecloth looks like the cells of the leaves and the stitching defines the color.

My favorite thing to do with cheesecloth is to make mushrooms. Child of the 60s that I am, they are a flora that fascinates me. And they are an excuse for eye popping color.

I do make them in batches. I’ll line up a set of mushrooms on a piece of felt, using Steam a Seam 2, pull out my brightest polyester embroidery thread and stitch up batches of mushrooms at a time, that I’ll use in many different quilts. The bright colors and zigzag stitch pop the the colors to a peak intensity. Now, who doesn’t want that?

What I did differently, is I made some smaller ones for pins and patches for my friend, Sherrill Newman who owns the South Shore Market in Porter, Indiana.

South Shor Market in Porter IN

I almost never make these available to people except as finished quilts. But she talked me into it. I made a small batch for her store. Some of the left overs I’ve put on sale on Etsy. They have pins backs on them, but if you wished to use them as a patch, it would be a matter of a moment to remove that with a seam ripper.

Hand dyed cheesecloth might just be the sheer you’ve been longing for. Bright, cotton, and beautifully texturized, it makes great flowers, leaves and ‘shrooms.

Rethinking White: Another Approach to Thread Color

| ellenanneeddy

It would be nice if color were formulaic. Unfortunately it’s just not. Color is complicated, and thread color is even more so. How do we pick thread colors to create a flower shade? And what do we do if we want to create white?

White has it’s own complications. It’s a flashlight on a quilt. If you put on real white it’s intense. It blinds you to darker details. So often bright white is just too much.

It’s also boring. It needs shading and definition. Flat white is, well, flat.

I wanted some white clematis for a quilt.

The first question that I ask is what color is my light, How do I know what color my light is? My light is the color of my fabric. In this case my fabric is full of blue light. So my light is blue. I then imagine my flowers dusted with blue light.

I chose to use metallics for this because of their translucency. The sheers will also be translucent which adds to the feeling of them being flower petals. That being said, I decided white, silver, and grey threads white just for contrast. But if I were going to add a color for shading, blue was a good bet. The gold and purple gold were contrasts for the center swirls. And there is always room for lime green. It adds excitement without having a high color impact.

My other secret weapon I used was sheers. There are at least a dozen sheers I cut into petal shapes and fused on to blue felt, with tear away stabilizer behind it. The difference in the sheers make differences in each petal.

Using a different thread on each side of the petal creates shadows. Putting a crease through the petal in green and gold increases the illusion.

Here is the bank of them embroidered on the felt.

Here they are cut way. White is only one of the dozen threads I used, but my flowers are still white .

Here they are cut out on the background. There will be leaves and moths, but its a start.

So when you are thinking about thread colors, think about your light. Go both lighter and darker in your thread color for shadows and highlights. And if all fails, add lime green.

The Eyes Have It: Creating Shining Eyes

| ellenanneeddy

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.

Find something shiny and make your eyes shine.

These do.These do.

Drawing in the Dark: Using Black Stitchery As a Pencil Sketch

| ellenanneeddy

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.

Sample Books: Keeping the Records

| ellenanneeddy

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.

Over and Over Again: Ladybugs, and the Need for Serieous Work

| ellenanneeddy

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.