Hand-dyed Fabrics

Splitting the sky: The Advantage of Split Light Sources

| ellenanneeddy

I don’t piece well. It’s not my skill. Anything that takes accuracy and careful cutting really isn’t my skill. The new 770 Bernina came with a foot that does make it better, but I don’t normally do large pieced tops. I know better. It’s not pretty when I do.

But there are rare occasions when I piece a split light source top.

Why? Why walk into accuracy land and piecing?

A light source brings you fabric with direction, and a built-in world. That world can be integral by itself. But if you want to filter the light as if it were through haze, woods, or shadow, you can piece two light source fabrics to create that shaded look. There are several approaches, with different effects.

Vertical Piecing

Where the Heart is

Where the Heart Is was pieced from two separate yards of the same blue/orange color range. I lay both pieces together on the cutting board and cut them in gradated strips, 2″, 3″, 4″, etc. Then I sewed them together with the narrowest light of one to the widest side of the other, in gradation. Set in a vertical arrangement, it makes for light flowing through the trees.

Horizontal Piecing with a Frame

Envy

Envy was one horizontal light source yard, split in gradations with a half yard cut in 2″ strips put between. The piecing creates a sense of space. The narrowest strip in the gradation defines the horizon line.

Piecing within Multiple Frames

Sometimes I split the two fabrics with the light at the widest on one side and the dark widest cut so they can carry the light across the piece. Twightlight Time was also double framed with a 2″ and a progressive border. Having a narrower border on the top weights the bottom of the piece.

Piecing Machines

Lately, Don found me a Singer 99 at a yard sale. For those of you not familiar with these darlings, they are a featherweight industrial drop-in bobbin Singer. They only straight stitch, but the stitch is impeccable. They are tougher, and faster and they use bobbins that are still commercially available. I’d never seen one before, but I fell in love instantly. It took a little work and some creative parts searching, but Don got it working for me and it’s perhaps the best piecing machine I’ve ever had. Did I mention Don is my hero?

So I pieced the guinea hen’s background on it.

How do you keep it straight? It’s tricky. If I get them out of order the fabric doesn’t progress correctly through its colors. I make all my cuts, leave the fabric on the cutting board until I can number the pieces all on the back side. Since there are two pieces of fabric cut, I label my fabric, 1a,2a, etc. and 1b, 2b, etc. and chalk in the sequence on the ends so I can always keep them in order.

Expanding Fabric Size

Sometimes there’s just a beautiful fabric that needs to be bigger. That’s been known to happen too.

I needed a background for What the Flock, a grouping of guinea hens. I’m low on fabric and money right now, so I have to make do. I found a purple piece that should make a great meadow, but a yard was just a bit small. So I pieced in another half-yard to expand it. I cut the half yard in 2.5″ widths and graded the yard-long piece in segments of 9″, 8″, 7″, 6″, and 5″,

Seam Rollers

For those of you like me, who hate to run back and forth to the iron, there is a seam roller. You can use this gadget to flatten your seams right where you’re sewing. Roll it over the seam and you’ll have flat, ready-to-sew seams without the iron woman run.

I don’t piece often, but these backgrounds are worth it. I love the shaded light and the action of light of the fabric across the piece.

Going with the Flow: Using Hand Dyed Fabric to Design Your Stipple

| ellenanneeddy

I’m a big fan of hand dye. Like most things in art, it’s definative. You can tell who has dyed the fabric if you know their work enough. I’ve dyed my own fabric since I was 10 in some way or another.

for a long time I’ve used a sponge dyeing technique. I mix a number of dyes (30-60 colors) and sponge them one by one onto the cloth. It gives me a spectacular color range, but it is never predictable. Which means each quilt I make starts with an unique piece of fabric.

There are always occlusions and patterns within hand dye. Most of them are formed by the way the fabric goes into the plastic bag to cure. I usually focus on the flow of the colors in the design.

This time I really couldn’t. The background was so magnificent that I stippled it following the hand dye itself.

All metallic threads are more fragile than polyester or rayon. You always get more breakage if you put it in the top of your machine instead of the bobbin. Top thread goes through the needle 50 times before it lands in the fabric, Bobbin thread just gets pulled up once.

You can stitch the whole thing in poly or monofilament from the top and then restitch with metallic. I don’t like the texture from that. Too thick. And you can see that top thread under the metallic.

I’d rubbed oil paint stick over a ceiling tile to make the reeds in this piece. They were simple. I followed the paint marks with Poly Neon in matching colors.

The sky was not as easy as it sounds. I used a Madeira Supertwist thread for the stitching. It’s a beautiful metallic and stronger than most. But to follow the pattern in the cloth, I had to stitch from the top..

So I stitched from the top with a 90 Topstitch needle, endured endless thread breakage and went through a bottle of Sewer’s Aid. I think it was worth it.

Would I do it again? What wouldn’t I do for my art? If it needs it, that’s what we do.

I make my hand dyed fabric available for students and artists on Etsy. For more information check out Hand Dyed Fabric for Sale ir my Etsy Shop

Etsy Shop

Right Up to the Edge: Edging with Progressive Color

| ellenanneeddy

We’ve talked alot about progressive color. Any image with a flat color scheme is going to be just that. Flat. Shading creates a top and a bottom, a sense of where something is in space and dimensionality. There are a million ways to shade. Shading is about value. it’s also about creating a dimensional image. Shading makes things round. Which helps them look real, even if the color is a bit wonky. But it can be managed many ways. Here are some of the ways I build color schemes.

as a series of the same color

a base color with a shocker and shader, say, orange. warm yellow, yellow. cool yellow, with purple and green (see Shockers and Shaders)

as a undershading with a dark color and creating a layer of complementary over stitching (Under the Skin: Thoughts about Shading)

as colors zoned next to each other.

Almost always, I’m using progressive color. You can see the colors line up from dark to light to create shadows and space.

We’ve also talked about over stitching, edge stitching. I usually do a final stitch over in black, just to clean up the edge from rough stitching. See Hard Edge Applique: Defining the Line.

These birds are by their nature outlined, feather by feather. Not just with black but a bright outline as well.’

One of the basic color rules is that your background defines the light of the piece. If tyour images are in an orange light, then the outlines are orange. So I shaded the outlines as well as the basic shaded background. Do I have that many shades of orange thread? Of course I do!

Shading the orange outline as well as the birds helps establish their round plump little selves.

Next week I’ll share what happened when I tried to do a reflexion of the birds in their pond.

At the Turn of a Head: How little Details Create the Visual Path

| ellenanneeddy
Before owls

I’ve been working on this quilt for some while, and it’s gone through several transformations. We had a mocking bird in here which is now slated for a later flight, somewhere else. And we’ve added lizards and subtracted lizards. All the way through, it’s been a stumbly path.

But each quilt needs to build a path for your eye. It’s more obvious with elongated quilts, but if you want movement in your work, you need to help the eye move.

What makes your eye move? Usually the small things: rocks, bugs, a strand of yarn over the piece, leaves. In this case, it’s bugs and owls. What makes the owls seem to move? The turn of their heads. What makes the owls heads move? What they’re looking at, of course.

It helps that the owls are darling. I’ve been in love with them since I stitched them in. But I found the path of the whole piece depended on what they were looking at.

It’s not an exact science, but we look where the owls are looking. It all turns on the turn of the heads.

I’ve talked a lot about the visual path. You can find more information about it on the new web page: It’s the Little Things: Building the Visual Path.

We have it all embroidered and stitched down now. Next stop: backing and binding.

Creating Color by Underpainting

| ellenanneeddy

I talk alot about color theory, choosing of threads and creating color schemes. The nature of thread painting is no different than any other art. It’s a creating of colors from components. How you arrange those components changes the effect you get.

I usually line up colors light to dark and add in a shocker and a shader. That color scheme gives us a smooth layer of color that builds on itself. It’s pretty. But it hasn’t got a whole lot of depth.

Sometimes I separate the the scales into a dark and light zone. That creates a deep separation on the scales without any shading. That’s pretty too.

I wanted something different for this fish. I wanted the scales deeply separated and clear. So I underpainted my fish first in blues, purples and greens, and then over painting with yellows and oranges.

Is it extra work? Yep. Would I do it all the time? Probably not.

But one of the wonders of doing Koi is their textures. The textures of fins and scales and their sense of motion is all of that.

So I started underpainting with the complements of the piece. Since the fish is yellow orange, the underpainting should be blue. green and purple.

He’d be pretty if I just continued in that range. Instead, after establishing the darker underpainting, I painted over with yellow and orange threads.

After that, I added a light layer of turquoise metallic thread for flash and black outline for definition.

This is where I think I’m going with this. The underpainting separates and lifts each scale and the outlining nd flash stitching punches it visually.

If you are keeping score of colors on the color wheel, you’ll notice it has a full range of analogous colors from Yellow, green, purple to blue.

Is one method better. Heavens, no! It’s a matter of having choices and knowing what those choises offer you. Now I’m off to stitch rocks and hostas.

building a Background

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve spent the last week working on this lizard. He’s ready now for a home.

That’s not as easy as it sounds. Ive done a series of these lizard pieces. They’re based on stone floors and wild things growing through the cracks.

I have a collection of ceiling tiles I use for larger rubbing plates. But I felt a need for something new. So I headed to Lowes in search of texture.

I’m very excited by this rock panel. It’s on a mesh, and perfect for oil paint stick rubbing. But I tried some other things as well

I’m not sure I’m there yet. But I’m working on building the right home.

Tiny: Embroidered miniature Bugs

| ellenanneeddy

I’m worn out after doing a bunch of big pieces. Big is of course, relative. I consider anything past 33″ x 43″ largish. I like workin that size. But the last ones have stretched larger, and I’m tired of shoving large wads of fabric through the machine.

I’ve been working on a white garden piece. The idea came fromThe White Garden, a speculative fiction about Virginia Wolf. She was thinking about an all white garden for the blackout, so that the moon would show on the white petals. I found some embossing plates that were wonderful prarie grasses. I put them on dark blue hand dye in shades of white and blue.

I’ve never had the dicipline to plant only white flowers. Too much of a color junkie. But I love the idea.

This is a visual path piece. It’s about 12″ x 45″ So everything has to be tiny.

So I made a strip of white and pale flowers. But then it needed moonlight and bugs. No one said the bugs had to be white.

How is tiny embroidery different than large pieces. Several things work differently. First off, I want to avoid a thick outline. So instead of embroidering on a sandwich of hand-dye, felt, stitch and tear, and totally stable, I left out the hand dye, and embroidered on the felt instead. Since I wqs using black outlines, I used black felt. Using felt reduces the bulk, but I found it could not be ripped out or sewn over. This is partially why I made a lot more bugs than I would need.

I could have embroidered tiny pieces within the piece. But I chose not to this time. It still makes for a lot of distortion. So I did a batch of moths, fireflies, snails and rocks.

Embroidering tiny pieces insists upon simplification. The usual shocker-shader colors are too much. A simple range works better: gold and green, white and blue, green and blue.

The fireflies are also mostly unshaded. There’s no room for anything except the primary colors of red and green.

So my white garden is full of wild color, very tiny bugs. I think I could find my way in it.

You Have To Blame Someone: Dammit Dolls

| ellenanneeddy

Dammit Dolls

It’s been a tough week. I’m a machine down and my right knee isn’t working. So I’ve been working on that small blue and white moonlight piece with moths and fireflies. Which means lots of fireflies and tiny moths.

Sewing the body

But my week didn’t really top the charts. I have a friend having a triple bypass next week. I know she’s scared out of her mind. I also know I’m too far away to do very much. So I’m making her a Dammit Doll.

Her friend suggested I make clothes for her. It’s a nice thought, but I’m not really a sewer. And it will cost more than buying clothes. I told her friend that I had gone to the Omar the Tentmaker school of fashion design. My speciallty at moments like this is something silly.

Embroidering the face

I don’t care how much your doctors care, and how kind the staff is. Surgery sucks. Seriously. So there will inevitably be alot to be upset about. All that energy has to go somewhere. So you can take your Dammit Doll, wack it on any surface near by and speak the time honored chant: “Dammit, Dammit, Dammit.” Those of us with a more Shakesperian eduction may be able to elaborate on that.

Pearl cotton hair

It’s true. The feelings need to go somewhere. There’re not a lot of ways to express that in the hospital. It’s adrenaline from being surgically attacked and the inabilty to move for the same reason. It shakes down badly without a way to express it all.

I’d say I could use one myself, but it’s enough to make them. And they need silly hair which is half the fun. I’ve made two so that her caretaker can have one as well.

In the end you have to blame someone and there’s no one to blame. So it’s San Andrea’s fault and a place to dump all the anger, fear, and pain that goes with surgery. An act of serious silliness.

Rethinking Rocks

| ellenanneeddy

Just like I’m not a desert girl, I’m not a rock girl either. I don’t think in terms of dry. As an artist it’s always good to stretch past what you know how to do.

The post, Good Bones:Rocks from Water, covers how I’ve usually done rocks.

For the longest time, I’ve cut rocks out of hand dye, and been satisfied with them. But I really wanted to do a waterfall with carp. And you can’t have a waterfall without somewhere from the water to fall from. That would be rocks.

I put up some cut grey and brown rocks and looked at them. They looked hopelessly childish and wrong.

It’s a bad moment. It’s also a great invitation. You dig deep, you look at it in different ways, and try to morph what you already know into what you need to do next.

That sent me spinning off to my library to look at how other people handle rocks. I have a book of Elizabeth Doolittle that’s full of great mountain imagery. And a great book on Glacier National Park with some fabulous waterfalls.

The real treasure was my Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, the classic sumi painting text. It said that trees were all about the veins in the leaves, but that rocks were about the grain in the rocks.

I thought about that for a while. Then I realized, the occlusions in the hand dye are the grains in the rock.

I replanned the rocks for the waterfall. Instead of making strips of rocks, I cut chunks. I filled in areas with smaller rocks and gravel.

Then I texturized the rocks, putting on a dark under edge and shading at the bottom third, and followed the patterns of the hand dye as grain. I used black thread and a zigzag stitch to establish the bottom of the rock and then shaded with a long-short stitch. Finally I followed the grain of the rock using the elements of the hand dye. Since I did a lot of stitching, I made them separate from the piece on stitch and tear and felt as stabilizers.

I’m still unsure. But I’m closer. I need to make the rocks that define the pond underneath and sort out the waterfall, but I think it’s on its way.

These rocks need to be less regular. I tried to use perspective to determine the shading, but simple shading seemed to work better.

It’s a slower process. I’m stymied on the desert quilt while I’m waiting for the books I ordered to figure out sand textures. It’s not just sewing, it’s thinking.

What do you think? Are these rocks over-fussy, or do they add the right amount of texture.?

Next week, adding the waterfalls and koi.