Painted Lace: The Real Thing

| ellenanneeddy

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.

Health Update: Serious Wait and See

| ellenanneeddy

I saw my new cardiologist yesterday. Nothing has really changed. I still have a moderate leaky valve. I still have an aneurysm. I still have a blocked artery.

But none of them are actively causing me pain or difficulty. None of them are acute or active. They’re just there. And they’re not quite bad enough for surgery.

So for the moment, I’m off the hook. They’ll monitor. I shouldn’t lift anything heavy or strain, or lean over very much. That’s a very moderate group of limits, considering. I’m afraid I can’t help anyone move at this time.

Is it coming someday? Inevitably, I suppose. But not today. Today we make quilts!

And a Dutch baby for breakfast.

Thank you for your care, your prayers, your concern and your love. You’ve always held me up. I hope I can always do that for you in return.

clover Mini Iron: New Uses for Older Toys

| ellenanneeddy

Clover Mini Iron

I’m always tickled when I find a new use for an old toy.

I remember when the Clover Mini Irons came out. I was underwhelmed. There are easier ways to press a seam without heat. I know I had one. I can’t remember where it went.

I was working on a background for my ibis. I wanted clouds and a pond seen from above. These are atmospheric elements, mostly made from sheers and lace.

I like working on my photo wall. I can put things up and see them vertically. There is a distortion if you’re designing on a flat piece if it’s over a certain size. I use Steam a Seam 2 which allows me to reposition pieces until I’ve ironed.

But there is this perilous part where I go to move the piece from the wall to the iron. That walk down the hall is papered with scraps of fabric, properly placed on my piece that have fluttered down as I carried it through. It’s an unhappy moment. When I get it down to the ironing table, everything has to be placed again.

As an experiment, I got this mini iron, in the hopes that it could be ironed just a little.

Steam a Seam 2 can be tacked on just with the heat of your hand, and it can also be ironed on permanently with a hot iron.]

I had some safety concerns, but we figured them out pretty quickly. This is an old iron shoe that I used to place the iron on. It’s heatproof, and even when the iron rolls (which it does) it still is on a non-flammable surface.

I was also concerned about burning my Blue Dow wall. It is highly flammable. I was happy to find the shoe did not get hot enough to affect it.

I can also clean the iron shoe with iron cleaner and the Teflon Sheet with a No Stick Scotch-Bright Scrubby. The blue one if for no-stick pans, and won’t harm the pressing cloth

I was surprisingly pleased with the result. When I went to move my piece, it was stuck enough to stay in place. Definitely, I’ll use this little iron again.

When does It Change? When Does the Art Start?

| ellenanneeddy

I spent yesterday in a whirlwind of classroom at the Peoria Art Guild. The Guild supports a number of artists in so many ways. But one of the things they do each year is give a handful of teens an art immersion experience, with all kinds of working art and artists.

It was a privilege. It made me wonder. These kids are 14-17, maybe. But they’re already there. They know they’re doing art and they are unabashed about it. And what they could learn in technique is more than made up for by their passion, their courage, and their already formed vision. They spent 5 hours building images in sheers and hand dye. That may have been new to them. But the creative spark is something they are already solidly committed to. It was a delight to see them work. I’ll be back in two weeks and we’ll do the stitching part of it.

When does that switch happen? I run into a lot of people who tell me they aren’t artists. Usually, that’s because they’re more verbal than visual. If you talk with them they can explain their images and the concepts in a way that brims with art.

Perhaps the problem is how do we define art?. If it has to be set in a mold, like figure drawing, or landscapes, that’s a pretty big limit on a much wider world.

But if art is, vision out of chaos., order out of disaster, and the creation of beauty and sense in the retelling of ourselves., that may be where my definition hovers. Art is life. The way we live creates our own beauty, our own songs, soothes our worst fears, and helps us to see ourselves in a different mirror that focuses on our strengths and beauty, instead of our failures and misgivings.

Art simply flows out of that. The things we produce our wonderful. But they are largely the byproduct of the process of restructuring who we are through our imagery. These kids already have it. I believe we all do, from birth.

The Peoria Art Guild is a haven for artists and people who love and live art. You’ll find it at

203 Harrison St,

Peoria, IL, 61602,

Monday – Friday: 9 am – 4:30 pm

Saturday: 9 am- 2 pm

Sunday CLOSED

Old Toys in New ways: Paint Stick Lace

| ellenanneeddy

oil paint stick lace

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!

How Do You Measure an Artist?

| ellenanneeddy

This has been a tough week. I couldn’t get in to the studio regularly. My cardiac surgeon called to tell me he’s leaving his practice, and referring me to another doctor. And I had a friend die.

Trish Williams was an excellent fiber artist, a skilled quilter, and an astonishing story teller. She covered the black experience in her quilts in a way that drew you in and held you there, helped you to understand what had happened and how it felt. I was privileged to know her through Dana Baldwin and through the Peoria Art Guild. She died this week. I will never forget her work. I will never forget her.

What do we leave behind as artists? We leave a pile of art behind. Pictures, photos, quilts, it really doesn’t matter what the media is. You might think bei ng an artist is about artwork. I don’t really think it is. I think it’s about expressing what we see, our vision. We take what we see, we work with the images to retell our stories, to reinvent ourselves. And as we reinvent ourselves, sometimes, if you’re lucky, good or wise, sometimes we shift the world.

We also collect skills. Build new technology. Recover old technology. Open new doors. Pry open old ones gone and past. Take our own journies. Help eachother on their ways. Pass on what we know, about art, about stories about life. But it’s all in the end, a retelling of who we are, what we’ve seen and what we need.The artwork is a byproduct from the process.

Trish did all of that. You can see some of her magnificent work on her blog at https://trishwilliamshandworks.blogspot.com/. I figure God will put her in charge of directing sunsets, and I look forward to seeing her work.

Burn Testing: What is that fabric Made Of

| ellenanneeddy

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.

Applique Rescue: Hacks on Fixing Appliques

| ellenanneeddy

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.

Branching Out: A Tale of Two Branches

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve been waiting for a while to finish this quilt. Right now it’s all pinned together. All the components are finished, but not stitched down.

Branches are always hard for me. I’m more comfortable with leaves, but the leaves need to sit on something. And this heron needed a nice dead branch to stand on as she surveys her pond.

I think it’s harder because it’s more abstract. I’m not quite sure how to do the portrait of a tree. So I start with a shape, and I’m trying to make an interesting bark.

I’ve tried some slash applique for branches. I tried that first. I used two layers of hand dye with felt and Stitch and Tear as a stabilizer. I was trying to get the grain of the wood to wrap around the branch.

I stitched it down, straight stitch, trimmed out the shape, stitched in grain lines, and slashed the top layer. Then I hand ironed them with a point turner so they would stand upright, and stitched along the seam.

Once I sliced through the top layer, I roughed up the fabric with the edge of my mustache trimmer. The mustache trimmer was not on, but the blade on it made a nice surface to make the edges fray a bit.

I don’t consider it a success. I don’t like the shape and I don’t like the direction of the bark.

So I did it again. This time I used three layers of cotton, and stitched vertical lines much closer together. I didn’t really savage the upper layers. Instead, I sliced through them like chenille. I tried several methods but it really was easier just with scissors. I roughed it up with the trimmer as well.

This isn’t appliqued down yet, but I’m so much happier with it. The other branch will work in a forest floor piece, but not here.