I’m a bit shy about this, but all art runs not only on desire or passion solely. There are bills to pay and we hope all of us as artists to sell enough work to pay them.
But those of us who have taught, who have shown, who have written to share their art know that much of what we do is never paid for, except in the sense that we pay back the people who came before us. It’s how we make a community for all the artists we know.
So if you would like to support me, buy me a cup of coffee, or let me know I’ve helped or inspired you in some way, here’s a tip jar. I know you’ve supported me all along my journey as an artist. If you’d like to express that in a monetary way, I’d be much obliged. Thanks!
Most of my work centers around threads, so I fuss about them quite a bit. Most threads divide into their components: metallic, rayon, cotton, and polyester. Fs 2/20 is a bit different. It has a black core the metallics are wrapped around and when it’s used in zigzag embroidery looks like little beads.
Madeira Threads Metallic Thread Color Chart FS 2/20
These lizards were stitched as bobbin work, out of FS 2/20. The eyes are sliver.
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In contrast, these butterflies were all out of Supertwist Madiera metallic, with FS 2/20 bodies. Again, shiny Sliver eyes.
Why does all that matter? Because those three kinds of thread offer a totally separate look that makes the objects embroidered in them automatically different from each other. Your eye sorts for shiny first. That means that first, it sees the shiny eyes, then the supertwist butterflies, and finally the rich beaded looking lizards. Now, how cool is that?
FS 2/20 is not an easy thread to find. To my knowledge, you need to get it from Madeira. But I do think it’s one of the most beautiful threads I know of. They also have Poly Neon and Supertwist and a bevy of embroidery stabilizers.
Being someone who does nature quilts, it seems unnatural to frame a background with a border. Nature doesn’t fit into a picture frame very well. Of course, there are times when you simply have to. You have a 50″ subject that needs a background and 45″ fabric just won’t stretch far enough to accommodate.
But there are other reasons to create a border.A border can emphasize a light source in the center. A border can bind your subject into the frame of the piece, capturing it almost. Breaking through that border establishes the idea that your subject can’t be contained. That it’s moving so hard and so fast you can’t keep it in a box.
This heron just turned out to be too big for any of the fabric I had. I considered splitting a light source, but the background was just too good to cut up. So instead, I bordered it.
Borders are basically a frame. And like other frames they either offer something special or they really detract. You can use a border to create a different atmosphere, to give a boundary, or to simply expand the fabric. In this case, I needed the fabric extended, but I didn’t want to make it a square box for my subject.
Unbordered, Equal Borders, Gradated Borders
These rectangles show three options: an unbordered piece, a piece with equal borders, and a piece with gradated sizes. Equal borders make a plain frame for the subject. But a gradated border gives weight to the bottom, gives a travel direction to the eye, and starts the movement of the piece before the subject is even applied.
I cut my outside strips at 5″, 6″, 7″ and 8. Narrowest on the top. Widest on the bottom. The green inner border is almost the same value (black/white) as the purple so it doesn’t make as hard a border statement.
The head of the bird is in the lightest (narrowest) spot and his feet are where the sun don’t shine.
The frame also creates a light source in the center, illuminating the bird.
Using a border, not only to make more space, but to define light and direction is an easy way to make a frame. And pulling your imagery out side the box breaks the border in a way that makes the whole piece move. What could be easier?
I love creating color with thread. The threads available make an endless choice of colors. You’re eye blends the bits f thread that peek out from their layers. It makes colors that are rich, dense, and complicated. What’s not to love?
But sometimes it gets too monochromatic. I was working on this heron and I wanted some fish companions for him.
When I picked out my threads for these, I wanted them red to stand out from all that grey in the heron. Red is funny. Like every color, it can lean either to the sun or the shade. A balanced red would use threads of both tempuratures. I used both kinds, a little purple and teal for shaders. And I threw in a green just to spark it.
By the time I got to the green, the whole mass was bland. Pretty. Stripy. Bland. I put in the green and it just woke up. Then more reds and finally oranges.
The green stitching on top is garnet stitch, in small circles. It changed everything!
Yellow overstitching creates a swirl on the fish face that helps round the face. Overstitching adds a color layer, but it also breaks through that bland smooth color.
It helps, of course that the yellow complements the purple, and the green complements the reds. But the textural elements also wake up the fish and feed our eyes.
What can you do with your days, but work and hope. Let your work find your dreams through your play. What can you do with each moment of your life, but love till you love it away.
Bob Franke, Thanksgving Eve
It’s the end of the year. I don’t always pay much attention to that. Every day is a studio day, and everything else is pretty much second to that.
Three years ago, I thought I was done. I thought I wouldn’t go back to my art. I had lost so much and I didn’t see a way back.
Then three things happened. I sold a major quilt I never expected to sell. It was big, it was odd and although I loved it, I knew it wasn’t within the mainstream. But it sold.
I told Don, and he turned to me and said.” Do you want a studio?” “I have a room,” I said. “No. A studio. He gave me his old house as a studio. And because we’d sold the quilt, there was enough to make it into a studio.
That changed everything. Between that sale and a place to work, God, or the universe, or just two people told me that it was not over and I should go back to work. And that they believed in me. I have no words. Thank you is inadequate.
Art is about finding beauty, finding sense, finding ourselves. It’s about retelling our stories. Sometimes your life is your art. You pour yourself into what you’re making. Sometimes your art is about finding ways to make your life beautiful and more sensible. Functional. It isn’t that some of us are artists. That’s for all of us. It’s our birthright as human beings that we are many things: a drummer, a potter, a writer, a musicial, a mother, a gardener, and among all of those, an artist. As we live we switch through seasons of doing art and living our lives as an act of art. It really is genetically who we are. Our art defines us and redefines us, but essentially, it retells our stories until they make sense to us.
So here is the bulk of my work for this year:
Bird quilts 2022
In all, it’s a year when I made over 200 square feet of quilts. I had a show at the Cove Center in Havana, Il. And I showed off my work at Feed Mill Fabric and Quilts, and at the GAlesburg Art Center. And I could. Why?
Because of the support I got from you all. When you follow my process, share your own journey, purchase a quilt or fabric, let me show, you aren’t just interacting with me. You’re impacting what I can do in the future. You are making resources available that make my art possible. Again, thank you is inadequate
Other quilts
Small Artifact Quilts
For that, in return, I try to give you back my art, my process, my knowledge, and my love. It’s small, but it’s what I have. And it’s mine, only because you’ve given me yours.
To Don, words are completely inadequate. But I’ll make you fried mushrooms tonight. It’s a sign and a symbol. And it’s art into life.
Nothing is quite as daunting as a really large embroidery. This babe is almost as tall as I am (4′ 10″). I haven’t measured him yet, but he doesn’t fit on a yard of fabric and we’ll have to sort that out soon.
Part of what is daunting is seeing the whole on a piece like this. Part of it is that when things go through that awkward half-embroidered stage, they look really weird for quite some time while you’re finishing off.
I’ve always made a point of showing you all of my errors. Partially because I view that kind of honesty as helpful and partially because I don’t necessarily view them as errors. They are the path through that particular piece of art. Sometimes they even turn out to be helpful.
I finished binding one quilt in a bright green in the middle of working on this quilt. Went back the next morning, and finished a large swath of feathers, only to find they were that very bright green. I was appalled. I picked up the mustache trimmer, looked at the immense patch of green, and quailed.
Then I thought for a while. Part of the problem with herons is that they are mostly grey and dark blue. With bits of rust. They are exquisitely formed but the color scheme leaves much to be desired.
But what is grey? Any color can be made into grey either by adding a lot of white or a lot of black. It’s a matter of value.
So I gathered up all the colors I had that were the same values, not colors. I added a lot of rust that gives it a warmer color, which means I’ll need a background with warmer shades as well.
All those colors sort of made it rainbow-colored. And rainbow colors make iridescence. But since they’re the same values, it’s still greyish. I think it’s going to be all right. I’ll know in several days when it’s all stitched in.
A word about the photography. I just got a new to me iPhone 12 mini. I do think the pictures are an improvement. Let me know what you think.
If you’d like more information about ripping with a mustache trimmer, see the blog To Rip or Not to Rip.
I’ve lately been working with some larger major works. This year has been about building back a body of work. And it’s been successful. Here are a few of the larger competition/gallery pieces I did this year.
These pieces excite me. They take a real chunk of time, but I’ve learned some technique this year that has speeded that up. But a large piece is about a lot of visual thought. It has to fill up space so it needs points of interest, both up close and at a distance. The longest part of a large quilt is taking the time to think it through. They don’t work like small quilts. I know people who enlarge a small design into a large quilt. I’m not one of them. The space gets filled differently. Larger quilts are made from a central object with paths drawn around them.
Smaller quilts are more like snapshots. Not much there. But it’s all good eye candy. I spent the last couple days pressing through some little artifact quilts (made with rubbings and found objects). Because they are so tiny they offer a lot of freedom.
Lately, I’ve been working smaller as well as bigger. There is something wonderful about a tiny world you can step into visually, as a private retreat. They are designed differently so they make your brain think differently. And because they’re small they’re affordable. Everyone deserves art.
Besides, tiny quilts can go in intimate small places. They don’t need a full wall. They don’t have to match the couch. They make a retreat into another world in just a tiny space.
This is the latest batch of tiny quilts. You’ll find them on sale in myEtsy Shop.
I’ve been working for a week on a flamingo quilt. It’s a commission of sorts, so I’m working with the owner’s druthers. Blissfully, we have similar druthers and I think she’s quite pleased.
Part of this week’s fun has been choosing the background The flamingo is all embroidered, so the next step is building her world. I was looking at colors when I pulled out fabric opportunities, but I discovered quickly that what really happened is that the background changed the time of day.
The different backgrounds suggest different times of day
The background changes the time of day and that in itself is a powerful statement. One way or another she’s walking in surf but is it night? Is it in moonlight? Twilight? Afternoon? Early cool morning?
Those are more than logical questions. They make a statement about the quilt itself and what it conveys. They tell me about this bird, who she is, where she is, and what her world is like.
All done by a simple choice of cloth. It never ceases to amaze me. Mostly the fabric choice is about letting the subject shine, but that choice carries meaning as well as color. Hand dye is a miracle that happens all the time but only once for each piece. The miracle we choose opens all kinds of choices and shuts other possibilities out. I’m thinking this will be the “right” background
Final Choice!
I turned around the darker one so that her face is in the light. We have a winner!
Still deciding about the moons. Do I want arced moons or just one? Decisions…..decisions.
Years ago someone asked me how many mushrooms go in a quiche. I asked back, “How many mushrooms do you have?”
I don’t make copies of things. I do make variations, and I find it useful to rethink some things I’ve done before, or more importantly tried to do before. I might get lucky. You never know.
But there are some things I know I can always use. There are never enough dragonflies, daisies, frogs, or mushrooms. They make an excellent point of interest for a visual path through a piece. And every so often I make batches of them.
The last two quilts had lots of frog and mushroom action. But they are such different pieces. Why did that work? Why do the same color elements work in two really different color backgrounds?
I’ve thought about it a bit and have decided that bright is a color all of its own. Green Heron Hunting features a bright fall-red sky, a stream, and some rocks. High Rise Living is a soft-colored background as a garden with lobster claw plants dangling in the breeze. The backgrounds couldn’t be different. But both backgrounds are a strong contrast to the mushrooms and frogs. High Rise Living is almost pastel. Green Heron Hunting is a bit somber. Both of them are high-contrast against the backgrounds
Batching regular elements has changed my work a lot. I find I can do larger elements with much less distortion. The downside is they need to be stitched down afterward. The mushrooms get stitched down with the most prevalent color on the edge. The frogs and other elements usually get stitched down with black. I don’t always like the heavier black borders, but it eliminates a lot of pucker and distortion.
So I continue to make batches of the elements I know I’ll use again and again, Contrast, any contrast makes elements work together. And there’s always room for one more frog.
