oil stick rubbing

What Rules? Testing Out Old Theories about guilding lilies

| ellenanneeddy
Swirling water, with metallic thread.

Whenever you teach, people want you to give you rules. Directions. Patterns. A safe way to get results.

That’s fair. That’s what they come to class for. What they’d really like is a formula. Add a plus b, divide by six and get your result. I do understand. And underneath it all, I have a list of odd rules as well.

But I do know that they’re odd. They’re based usually on experience. But sometimes they’re annoyingly limiting. And every so often, I test them out. I push the borders, just to see if it’s a superstition I’ve made for myself, or something really helpful. Or if the materials have changed.

This is a process I call gilding the lily. I take a really lovely print or rubbing and accentuate it with thread. I’ve taken to doing it a lot with oil paint stick rubbing.

One of the tricky things is working with metallic, of all sorts. Metallic goes with metallic, right? I used to be quite strict about that.

Until I had something I was embroidering there just wasn’t enough metallic colors for. And then I found my rule was silly. Of course I could dust something with metallic.

So lately I’ve been working with metallic oil stick paint. I’ve been embellishing rubbings with straight stitch and metallic thread, a technique I call Gilding the Lily. Did I have to use metallic thread? I thought so. I thought the poly thread would cover it up too much. I thought it needed the shine.

But I had to work the metallic thread from the top. And metallic thread, even the best metallic thread is touchy in the top of the machine. It goes through the needle 50 times before it lands in your fabric. So I tried it.

How silly of me. I sat down with a pile of rubbings and some beautiful poly neon. The look was different. But lovely. And my rules were so much eye shine.

It’s worth not shutting the doors of creativity because we have a safe sure method, a path we know. Sometimes we simply have to stumble past our safe path to experiment outside those possibilities to something new.

So if I waffled teaching you in class and couldn’t give you a complete formula for a perfect quilt, I hope you understood I’d given you permission to try anything your heart desired. Me too!

9

Romancing the Rose

| ellenanneeddy
Dragonflies and roses

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.

Thinking Outside the Box: That’s Not What You’re Supposed To Use That For

| ellenanneeddy

I remember being told I should color within the lines. It’s probably just as well I never was able to do that. I’m certainly not about to start now.

I’ve been totally hooked on paintstick rubbing. Like everything else, it’s a tool to be used with other tools. I’ve been exploring more and more how to incorporate different plates with each other in design. Here’s the latest batch.

I love them. And I’ve recently found some iridescent paint sticks in colors that didn’t come in the kits.

There’s only one limit I don’t like. The plates tend to be small. You can repeat all you like. But they don’t lend themselves to larger pieces. Not to worry. I decided there needed to be a way. I went looking for more kinds of rubbing plates. The choices are limited.

I tried drawing with glue on placemats. I tried carving foam. I got desperate and bought some fondant plates. All too small or not quite enough. Or a huge mess. Not satisfactory.

Not everything that works marvelously was made for that purpose. Some of the best tools of the quilt world have been borrowed from some odd places. My favorite thread bags were originally worm bags for fishing. Rotary cutters started as carpet cutters, I’m told. Surgical seam rippers really are a surgical tool some brilliant nurse brought in to their quilting studio.

So in that same spirit, I bought some ceiling tiles. They’re two feet by two feet. And beautiful! Stiff textured plastic. Exactly like a rubbing plate, only bigger.

Here’s what they look like rubbed. I’m in love!

So I’m not supposed to use ceiling tiles that way? Isn’t a good thing I didn’t pay any attention to those rules? I think so.

Oil Stick Rubbing: Instant Gratification Glam

| ellenanneeddy

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.

Off the Grid: Experimenting Because You Can

| ellenanneeddy

9026-28 Artifacts, Dragonfly 2

It’s felt very odd not to be teaching on the road. My health has not permitted it, my husband has not encouraged it, and the demand is mostly gone. For a long while, I think my body decided it was a good time to sleep.

So the drive to create went on vacation until I was able to get out of bed. And the physical strength to work on large tapestries will have to be built up again. It’s a physical activity. It takes muscle.

So I’ve taken to playing with little things. I’m working on a project with Irish crochet in yarn. I’ll show you that later.

I’ve also been playing with oil stick rubbing.

 

866 Arabesque Rose

I know. I know. It’s not in vogue anymore. And it’s stinky. I know. I still think the look is amazing. I’ve been trying to incorporate it into quilts and have loved the look of it. It’s something structured in my very non-structured head.

I did a curtain of nothing but scraps of oil rubbed fabric. Then I started to think about what a small work would look like if that were the start.

 

 

 

 

920 Artifacts: Dragonfly 4

I stitched them with metallic thread to give them sparkle. They were beautiful but subtle. I don’t ordinarily do subtle.

So I added some neat brass findings, silk roses and novelty yarn. They were still subtle.

I worried about that for about three minutes and decided subtle might not be a bad thing.

919-18 Butterfly 2

So here they are. I’ve called the Artifacts, because I see them as found work rather than original embroidery. They’re sort of a collage in oil rubbing and stitching.

So let me know. What do you think? Every time you start an experiment, you have no idea where it might go.

These quilts are on sale in my etsy shop.