The Next Piece: What is the Next Passion?

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve just finished two pieces I started earlier this year. It’s a good thing because the show at the Peoria Art Guild hangs next Saturday. I’m fighting off a summer cold and feeling drained. Except that I wish my nose would drain.

Endings are hard for me. It’s hard for me to finish a quilt. All that passion, all that energy stopped. It feels wrong in some ways. I’m a bit like the artist who is done when someone takes the piece away from them.

Except that at some point, you really are done.

So this is why I almost always have a number of pieces in process. I still need to work through the last of Great Blue. I’m lost after I finish a major piece. I’m hunting for the next passion. And it needs to be a passion. To go through the drawing, the stitching, the dyeing, the quilting, and the embellishment is an immense amount of work. That takes endless energy, which is fueled by passion.

What am I looking for? What is it that I need?

color

Amazing color is always a draw! It can come through the dyed background or from my subject, but I can’t work without color. The images have their own color, but the light of the piece is the fabric background itself. Like a colored lense it sets the tone of the art. Everything is seen through that lense.

Form

The shape of things is incredibly exciting! Bird wings, frogs jumping, the intricacy bugs, the Fibonnacci progression numbers in space and time leave me breatheless.

Movement

The way those forms move. To see them in flight, in water, in repose, in play. I want to play with them.

Memory

Some moments change your life. Watching a heron land on a friend’s pond. Standing eye to eye with a Komodo dragon at the National Zoo. Standing in a training pond with dolphins. Watching the sun rise over a little waterfall at Spring Lake, through a fringe of wildflowers. I am imprinted with memories that always call me back to that point of wonder.

A Male Cassowari watching me …

So what do I do, when a piece finishes? I wander through books looking for the color, the form and the movement for the passion for the next piece. Do I know what’s next? I’m finding Cassowaries interesting. It’s like a thug dressed up for the ball. How dare you be that blue, that red with that yellow? Maybe.

Bringing Books Back to Life: Reprinting My Classroom Books

| ellenanneeddy

Over the years I’ve written a lot of books, small and large for quilter. When I was a child I believed that you could always get a book that had been printed. I was in high school when Eileen Driscoll, my English teacher, made us look for books out of print. Then I understood that a book wasn’t necessarily forever. Books go out of print. And then they’re just not available in the same way.

Books are primarily for a particular audience and purpose. We don’t think about that as we buy books, but the publishers always have that in mind. As a writer, I’ve learned to do that too. You need to have a pretty clear image of who you’re writing for and what they’ll use it for.

I’ve done a series of classroom books that were written primarily to be classroom notes for students. I put a lot of love and care into those booklets. They are not a catalog of skills or a huge gallery of pictures. What I was aiming for was a set of notes and pictures you’d want to keep as a reference after a particular class.

I’m proud of those books! They have patterns, step-by-step photos, a gallery, tips, and source information. They were never intended to be comprehensive. And they were self-published, which always costs more than going through a publisher. Some people were disappointed by their size. But they were always meant as classroom support, to as a comprehensive text.

I had a number of these books I’d printed for class. At one point, my printer stopped doing the saddle-stitch format they were in and they went out of print.

For more information about classroom books, see Classroom Books, Some thoughts about what you leave your students with.

But since I’m teaching Dragonfly Sky I decided to reprint two of those books together as one volume.

So Dragonfly Sky and Ladybug’s Garden are reprinted as one book, and are available in paperback now on Amazon. Kindle copy coming soon.

That’s good, because they cover the two classes I’m doing at Peoria Art Guild, September 9-10th.

Peoria Art Guild 

Natural Threads Ellen Anne Eddy Show September 1-28

Peoria Art Guild, 203 Harrison St, Peoria, IL, 61602, 309 637 2787 

Hours: Monday 9-4, Tuesday 9-6:30, Wednesday 9-6:30, Thursday 9-6:30, Friday 9-4 Saturday 9-2, Sunday CLOSED

Fantasy Flowers: Celebrating Sheer Wonders

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve never gotten over sheers. As I child, I couldn’t imagine how I could ever wear them. outside They required a life I couldn’t imagine. Or really want. Someone who sat politely in a clean room and was polite to incredibly stuffy people, who made a life of being “beautiful”. It never appealed. But organza! And sparkle fabric! And shot sheers? I was mesmerized.

When I started working at Vogue Fabric in Evanston, I was a quilter and a cotton girl. It was some while before I thought about what would polyester sheers look like on a quilt. But they were pretty. I think I saw Ann Fahl use some tulle on a quilt as shadows. It was eye-opening.

Then I got to thinking about the things that really were see-through. Mist, water, air, clouds, and of course, flowers. Yes you can applique sheers. They’re perfect for direct applique with fusibles.

I’ve been making flowers with sheers for a while. The technique is fused sheers on felt with a lot of free-motion zigzag stitching. It’s not hard. It is time consuming, but you have all the colors of thread for your crayolas. And it’s pretty.

The Sandwich

The surface you stitch on is the sandwich. For this technique I use a layer of Stitch-and -Tear, a layer of felt, and sheers and lace backed with Steam-a-Seam 2, I used to put in a layer of hand dyed fabric either to match the sheer or the background, but I’ve found it unnecessary if I’ve chosen my felt well. The color of the felt will naturally show through. That tends to accentuate the color of the flowers.

Working on a separate sandwich means I don’t have to worry about distortion.

Zigzag stitching always pulls up and distorts the piece. No matter how much it bumples up, I can cut the distortion away at the edge of my stitching and it will be flat enough.

The stitching on them is free motion zigzag gone wild. And the shading is made to make each petal individual and each flower its own star. The color of the flower is largely defined by the sheer and the felt behind it. But the shading of the petals is all threadwork.

For more information about making flowers from sheers, see

Making Coneflowers in the Snow.

I’ll be teaching the Fantasy Flower class for The Peoria Art Guild, Saturday September 16th from 9-12. Sign up now! 309 637 2787 

Peoria Art Guild 

Natural Threads Ellen Anne Eddy Show September 1-28

Peoria Art Guild, 203 Harrison St, Peoria, IL, 61602, 309 637 2787 

Hours: Monday 9-4, Tuesday 9-6:30, Wednesday 9-6:30, Thursday 9-6:30, Friday 9-4 Saturday 9-2, Sunday CLOSED

Show panic: Getting Ready with Grace

| ellenanneeddy

I’m delighted to announce I’ll be doing a show of my work for the Peoria Art Guild this September, 2023. Right now I’m running around the studio like a frenzied ferret. It’s not pretty. But it’s show panic. It’s how it’s done.

The show will open Friday, September 1st. I am so excited. I have a pile of new work to show and I’m so pleased to be able to do that in person with you.

These last two years have been a renaissance for me. I’m working larger, in wilder images and on fire with the art happening. Not bad for a lady at the other side of seventy.

So here is a review of last year’s work.

Major quilts

There are some large unfinished pieces almost ready to go.

small Works

As you can see it’s been a busy year!

The show will start at the

Peoria Art Guild September 1-30

Opening
First Friday, September 1
Gallery talk: 4pm
Opening 5-8 PM

Classes:
Fantasy Flowers: making flowers from sheers and embroidery. Saturday. September 16th, 9-12
Dragonfly Sky: Working with bobbin work. Sunday, September 17, 9-3

Free Lecture: The Visual Path Designing Art in Motion. Saturday 16th, 1-3

Peoria Art Guild, 203 Harrison St, Peoria, IL, 61602, 309 637 2787 

Hours: Monday 9-4, Tuesday 9-6:30, Wednesday 9-6:30, Thursday 9-6:30, Friday 9-4 Saturday 9-2, Sunday CLOSED

To celebrate, and to pay for some of the show costs, I’ve put my current small quilts on sale on Etsy at 25% off. Check them out
Are you excited yet? I’m exhausted. But thrilled. Come join me!

Fussy Stitching: Where Precision Counts

| ellenanneeddy

Normally, when I do a large embroidery, I’m working from the back. This works because I’ve got my pattern drawing on the back and it gives me all the information I need to fill it in. That assumes I can see my stitching.

Well, I do things the way I do unless I don’t. After a week of working on these guinea hens, I turned them right side up last night and stitched from the top.

Why? The stripes on these things are making me crazy. It’s sort of like matching plaid pant seams. Do you remember that hopeless enterprise? These birds depend on precise white stripes. The white doesn’t show up against the stabilizer, so you can’t see if it’s dense enough or smooth enough. What I thought was a bold smooth line looked raggy. These birds are fussy.

But I think they’re worth it. I also wanted you to see that you can overstitch. And sometimes that’s the answer.

I overstitch for a number of reasons: to outline a piece, to clarify the edge line, to add extra texture, or to put in highlight. I can put down a wonderful range of colors. But sometimes thot range needs the context of texture as well.

I wanted the dots separated so they went on first. The stripes went on, but I had no idea how raggy they looked from the front. So now, I’m going back to redefine them so they’re smooth and dense enough to please me.

The point of this is it’s not over until the fat lady sings. Until you say it is. So don’t be afraid to restitch, redirect and redesign something that isn’t quite right

Bobbin Work and Computerized Stitches

| ellenanneeddy

I had someone call and ask for this. So Cathy, this is for you. But it’s also information for other people who might want it.

Bobbin work is stitching done upside down with thick thread in the bobbin. It sounds hard. It’s not.

How thick? Usually, I use thread that’s either 5-8 weight for bobbin work. Pearl cotton comes in a million colors in those weights. There are thick metallic threads as well: YLI’s Candelight, Superior’s Razzle Dazzle, and Madeira’s Glamor are all 8 # threads and are beautiful in bobbin work.

I do my bobbin work free motion, because I can draw with it. It builds up images quickly because the thread fills in faster being thick. If you would like more information about free motion bobbin work, look at Bobbin Work Stitch Vocabulary for a short tutorial.

Here’s some basic information on Bobbin Work from the Stitch Vocabulary Book

Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book Page 17

Settings for decorative stitching

But what if you want to use all those cool decorative stitches on your machine? You can do that! It’s not that hard, but there are differences.

Leave your feed dogs up!

Use an applique foot that gives you some room for the thicker stitching.

Pick stitches that have no zigzag in them. Zigzag stitches are more likely to jam. Instead, stitches formed from straight stitch will work much better.

Try them out. Different size stitches may look very different. I’ve prepped some pieces of plain muslin with a backing of Decor Bond to stabilize them. I’m working from the back.

This works for most machines. I wrap the end of the thread around my bobbin, twist the thread around the winding pin and hold the thread in my hand. That way I can wind bobbins from threads in odd put-ups and reels. And I don’t need to rethread my top thread.

Stitching

Turn your piece on to the back.

Take your first stitch holding on to both top and bobbin thread so it doesn’t jam.

Go slowly until you know how your stitch will work.

If it jams, cut the bobbin thread at the end of the stitching and then you can pull the piece away from the machine safely

I recommend making a little booklet of your practice sheets. You can do that by sewing them together and binding the edge with bias binding.

Hope this helps!

Color Study: Why Red?

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve just finished Little Blues! I’m delighted with this quilt. It took me a while to get it finished off. In that process, on a whim I added some red silk flowers to the background.

Why red? Why not orange or blue or white? I did try those. But red was it.

I really think it’s worth the while to put up your color decisions on a color wheel. Just how you can see how they relate.

The color wheel gets a bad rap. It’s old fashioned, it’s boring, we all know how colors are made, it’s incomprehensible…. It’s still the best way I know to show the relationships between colors. It shows how colors are created. But most importantly, it shows how they react to each other.

The farther colors are apart from each other, the more tension there is between them. And like every good soap opera, more tension means more excitement.

At which point, you need to ask, where is this quilt going? If it’s in a baby’s bedroom, you might want to keep the tension and excitement to a minimum. But for a gallery? Bring on the excitement!

I was surprised when I put the colors up on the wheel. I didn’t realize how far around the wheel I had gone. But as you can see, the red zings across from the green. I don’t have much in there, but it wakes up a piece that has that sleepy analogous color thing going on without it. Not much. Just a handful of red silk flowers.

I consider using the whole color wheel a visual trick of sorts. It wins awards, and it’s showy, but color needs to be the focus of a piece for that to work well. But this almost full-color wheel is rich, satisfying, and just red enough to get attention.

For more information about color theory check out Color Theory: The Tug Across the Wheel and Thermal Shock: Shocking Color Choices.

Rethinking Cut-Away Applique

| ellenanneeddy

Most of the time when I applique fabric, I use a fusible like Steam a Seam 2 and I cut out my shapes. Except when I don’t.

Cut out applique works well for smaller, stable pieces that can be cut and moved around. Cut-away applique is better for elegant curved lines you just can’t cut out and move around..They shim out of shape too easily. And then they never lie flat.

Direct Applique

  • Attach a layer of fusible to the applique
  • Cut out the object before you glue
  • Stitch down free motion zigzag
  • 1 step process, just stitch it on
  • Thicker lines

Cut- away Applique

  • No fusible glue
  • Lay down a sheet of applique fabric
  • Straigh stitch in the design on top
  • Cut it away excess fabric
  • Stitch it down free motion zigzag
  • 2 step process
  • Softer, smoother lines

For this frog, I wanted a sinuous curved vine with curlicue tendrils. Not something that is easily done in direct applique. Larger cut-away applications can distort a bit. If we put a layer of the applique fabric over the top, stitch it down and cut it away, it’s a much cleaner, smoother line.

In cut-away applique, we stitch the design on an extra layer, and then cut-away what the excess.

Then we stitch down the edge with a free-motion zigzag stitch that can be smooth and lyrical like the design itself.

Here is the cutout vine ready for applique. What has changed? I used to draw and cut the leaves as well. I’ve done those separately to avoid some of the distortion.

Cut-away applique with Lace

The same process works with these lace butterflies. Rather than glue them on, and have the glue show through, I stitched around them straight stitch and then cut away the excess fabric. I had though I was adding butterflies, but I think they look more like the shadows of butterflies, which is much more cool.

Cut-away works as well with lace. These butterflies were part of a lace fabric. I stitched down the leaves and bugs, cut away the background, and stitched down the lace with a small free-motion zigzag stitch.

These techniques are neither right or wrong. It’s about using different techniques to get the results you want. It’s all a part of your tool box, for you to use as you want.

What happened Here?: Keeping Process Shots

| ellenanneeddy

But the other side of that, at the end of the studio day, you have you, your phone, and whatever happened that day. It’s a natural thing to take some pictures. And in the end of that, you’ve got a record of what happened here.

This is another story about technology. Most of us have come to that moment where your phone is your camera. It took me awhile. First off, they needed to be good enough to be your camera. They’ve been that for a while.

But if your camera is always there, you can always use it. Recently I got a new-to-me Iphone 12 Mini. Apple hasn’t continued a line of mini phones, but for me, they’re ideal. My hands are small and I really can’t hold on to a big phone. But the camera is just as good as you could ask. My latest book, Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book, was completely shot with my phone.

I post these in a regular way on my business Facebook page, in albums, because it’s fun for you to see, and it’s good for me to keep track of.I also regularly put some of them in my blog as I talk about my work. But my other reason is that I think it’s really important to have these for the owner of the quilt. Lately, I’ve been sending those photos with the quilts when I sell them. It’s their baby. They should have baby pictures.

I hope you keep pictures of your work on a daily basis. It’s good documentation. Your phone is right there. Use it.

You’ll find the process shots for many of my quilts on my business Facebook page.