Normally I don’t talk much about my health. I have the usual amount of 70-something booboos, which I consider boring, and I’m sure most of you do too.
This is more serious and it’s got me spun a bit. I have an ascending aortic aneurysm that has started to widen. I’m going to be having heart surgery as soon as we have all the testing done.
I have insurance but there’s a significant amount of preparatory work that is not covered. I find myself with a three thousand dollar gap that I have to find to have the surgery.
Etsy has a new program where the buyer can make an offer for an item and the seller sets a lowest price. I’m not doing this with the quilts at the Peoria Art Guild. I have an arrangement with them we have to hold to. And I’m not doing this with quilts under $500. But I’m arranging the other quilts so that you can offer me as much as 40% off the quilt.
If you want to pay a little more, you can ask for any discount up to 40%. If you really want something and want to offer less than that, call me. I am a motivated seller at this point.
My friends, my students and my fans have always been so kind to me. If you can help, or if you’ve been waiting for a best price, this would be a great time to buy a quilt. Thanks!
Last Friday night, we opened my show at the Peoria Art Guild! It was a lovely opening. Lots of folk. Lots of friends. Lots of artists I just met. I couldn’t have been more pleased. Or more humbled.
For all of us, who do art seriously, it’s a really private process. Even if you share your process online or in class, there are some things you really do in a very private space. All the left turns, small errors, large disasters and turn-arounds happen in that private space with presumably no one watching.
I’ve never felt very precious about that. I treat my mistakes as learning curves and have always tried to share them, just as a point of being real with students and other artists. It’s especially true if you teach. You owe people the truth about your process.
But when it’s in front of the public that feels very exposed. All the things you wished were better, smoother, flatter are out there, just as they are.
It reminds me what art is for. Art is about retelling our story. It’s the ability to see our world in a way that changes us, and the things around us to be stronger, better, more beautiful, more whole, more brave inside or out. And the journey we take as a storyteller is much more transformative than the story itself. and an inscrutable process, all of its own.
I love when my friends come to a show. They’ve walked with me sometimes close by, sometimes at a distance as I’ve made this work. It’s as much a part of them as it is me.
I love when I meet other artists in this same inscrutable process, doing something no one ever thought of doing before and finding their way to put it into being. They are a privilege. The glimpses we share of our processes are like watching thoughts take form, flesh, and flight.
And then there are the people who come to see that transformation. And respond. I’m always humbled that the images I have to work with have meaning to other people. And grateful for their kindness. This was a huge gift for me, and I want to thank the Peoria Art Guild, Shannon, John and Jeff, and Dana for opening this amazing opportunity for me. And Don for his endless help and support!
So come see the show! It will be up for the month of September. And come join me next weekend for classes. We’ll learn how to make Fantasy Flowers and Bobbinwork Dragonflies next weekend. And talk about how to build a visual pathway through your art.
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
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.
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.
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.
We worked with garnet stitch to do octopi several weeks ago. That was an all-over garnet stitch that could be shaded across the piece. But what if we want separate spots and smooth shading around them? How do we go about that?
What we need to do is to define the spot clearly, and then shade around it. But shading with one color around the spot negates a color range shade. We need to put in our spots and then shade around them defining different sides of the spot with different colors.
We start dark to light with the darkest threads first. The first color needs an outline stitch done at an angle to define the shape. Then we’ll shade out to the side, and then smooth the line between the outline and the shading.
But after that row, there’s more shading than outlining. When we come to each spot we outline the spot on that side and shade past the edges of it. Then in the next color row, we outline it from the other side and shade it into the earlier colors. The spot is clearly in the color range but it’s defined by the outline around it that fits the shading as it changes.
It’s a cool trick for including spots in a smooth range of colored stitchery.
Like most little girls, I had a pink bedroom. Unlike most other girls, mine was seafood bisque pink with brown. Needless to say, I’m hesitant about using pink. I certainly don’t wear it..
But in spite of my feelings about pink, I know better than to dismiss a color from the color wheel. They’re all in relationship with each other. It’s like putting up with weird Uncle Fred because you really like his wife Ethel. They are deeply connected and you get the one when you choose the other.
And some things are just unabashedly pink. Like roseated spoonbills. So here we are.
She’s a nesting bird, and I loved her pink and brownish background. You can push past your color preferences when you try,
These flowers were mostly white sheers and lace, stitched over in pinks, cream, and whites. The white glowa behind and the thread gives a pink blush. To my mind, they register as white flowers but the shadows echo the burgundy background. It’s a delicate look.
I haven’t done lady slippers for a while. And I wanted a white creeping vine around the outside. But you can’t make something just white. It has no dimension. So this time I used white sheers to form the flowers, but I pulled in other colors to shade them. Because the background is fuchsia, I went for soft pink shading for the white flowers. For the lady slippers, I went into brighter pinks and burgundies, with the white shining through just a bit.
Now, what makes the color of a flower? Or any other thread work? Is it the thread? Or are there other factors.
No matter how much you stitch over something you always see the background. Always. Usually I am for a background color that accentuates the threadwork.
What happens if it doesn’t blend or match? It glows from beneath. I’ve started with iridescent white organza to create an inner glow for the lady slippers.
I stitched from both sides, leaving just a bit of plain iridescent organza in the center to round out the flower. The iridescent background creates an inner glow and a subtle pink.
Here I chose pink sheers and stitched over them with various pink/apricot threads. The effect is vibrant and full of color.
The background I stitch over is as much a part of the color as the threadwork. The differences are subtle but very cool. The combination of light and color creates dimensional blooms that glow.
