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.
What do these two quilts have in common? Not that much. They’re a different shape. They’re a different color space. They’re a different time of day. They’re clearly both heavily embroidered and oil paint rubbed. But other than that?
They both needed small elements to guide the visual path within. I made all the bugs for White Garden. But I didn’t need them all. The others went into Fire Flies.
Large embroideries take time. I draw them, look at them with some scruteny and eventually embroider them after I’m sure they’re right. It takes time. And effort. Usually a larger embroidery takes about a week to a month. They are a long term investment in time and energy.
If I’ve drawn them well, they should have energy and movement within them. But a good moving image needs to be placed in motion. One easy way to create movement is by the stepping stones of smaller elements. I often use rocks, bugs, butterflies, frogs, flowers and other natural images to help direct that path.
So it stands to reason, I need a lot of those. I do make batches of them for specific projects. But I always make way more than that one project needs. I used to stitch them directly into the quilt. I’ve changed to stitching them separately because it allows me much more flexability.
Why? It’s time effective. I don’t need to set up the thread, redraw the cartoons, and go through just enough flowers or bugs. A batch of them, with leftovers is as good as extra waffles the day after you made them. It’s just smart.
It’s also fun to sit down to a sheet full of little fish or flowers. It’s a lovely 2 day project, usually.
Do I have a collection of these things? You betcha. But they go away fast. There’s always another quilt that needs a trail of bugs.
For some while, I’ve bound my quilts with a buttonhole binding. It’s a buttonhole with a cord inside. At first, I wanted to accommodate a leaf or a frog leg coming out of the piece. Then I wanted to bust out in all kinds of places.
I wrote this 4 years ago. It’s pretty good instruction but it leaves out something I thought was obvious at the time.
I started out as a traditional quilter. And for years I bound all my quilts with bias tape. But as my work became more organic, it felt terribly strange to put my work in a square box.
“The corded buttonhole is a standard technique from couture sewing. Translated from there to the quilt world, it gives us a way to finish both quilts and art clothing in a new way that’s literally out of the box. Instead of the square edges and gentle curves that are the limit of bias binding, we have the freedom to follow any shape. That means that the edge of our pieces is not defined by straight lines, but by their internal design. It also means a quilt can have an external shape that fills a wall in a much more exciting way. And because our binding is thread, we have the full range of polyester thread colors for our palette.
I prefer to do this on my Bernina because of the specific feet and the stitch quality. You can use a regular utility foot and a couching foot off another kind of machine.
We’ll be using two basic feet for our binding.
What largely counts is the thread escape on the bottom of the foot.
The #1 foot has a top groove we can use to couch down the cord. The #3 foot has a thread escape groove on the bottom for the zigzag stitching to pass through. The #3 foot is the older style buttonhole foot (without the electronic eye)Â that has exactly the right thread escape to accommodate the buttonhole binding
You’ll need
#3 Crochet cotton
A quilt/ or quilted object backed, quilted, and ready to bind
Polyester #30-40 weight embroidery thread the color of your choice
A#3 foot and a #1 foot
A Bernina
A rotary cutter and mat
Binding
We’ll bind our piece with a corded binding that’s a corded buttonhole all around the edge.
Preparing your quilt:
Stitch around the edge either with monofilament nylon or with a neutral embroidery thread so that all the layers are together
Using your rotary cutter, cleanly cut away all the extra bat and backing fabric, exactly the shape you want your quilt to be.
You don’t have to have a square. It can be any shape at all. To keep sharp 45 degree corners or points, you need to clip the tips off them.
Thread your machine top and bottom with a polyester embroidery thread that you want for the color of your binding. You can use rayon or metallic thread, but the breakage makes things so much more difficult.
Attaching the cord:
Set your machine on a zigzag stitch, with the needle placed one position over from full left. Your stitch length should be at between the button hole setting at a # 4 width.
Position your quilt so the stitch falls just over the right hand edge of your quilt.
Start your stitching somewhere in the lower edge, not on a corner or direct curve.
Zigzag your cording all around the edge.
When you come to the end, drop your feed dogs and make several stitches to anchor the cord.
Clip your threads and cord.
Tip: If you have a quilt that ruffles at the edge, you can pull the cord and gather in the ruffle. This will not solve severe distortion problems, but it will fix minor ones. You should pull the cord before you change directions or turn a corner.
Covering the cord:
Your second pass should cover your cord with smooth zigzag stitching.
You’ll find certain areas may not have been included in the stitching. This will give you a chance to address that.
Set your sewing machine for the widest stitch it will give, and the densest stitch length it can handle. Put your needle position to the far right.
Use your #3 foot, with the double channel thread escape.
Position your quilt so that the stitch to the right ends over the edge of your quilt
Start at a lower edge, not on a corner or a curve.
Stitch around the edge of your quilt.
When you come to the beginning, move your needle position to the far left, set onto a straight stitch and stitch in place to anchor the stitching.
Sometimes I get enough coverage on the second pass, but that’s rare. Usually it takes a third time around. Turn the piece over. If you still have wisps sticking up through the binding, trim them as best you can, and go around another time.
Corners, curves and points:
These all take a bit of finesse. Your standard button hole stitch isn’t set up to cover them. But you can get good coverage on them by rocking your stitch over them. As you’re stitching, you can pull back just a bit from the front to make sure your stitch line covers everything. Curves may also need that assist. For corners and particularly for points stitch up to them and turn the piece at slightly different angles as you go round the edge. You can put the needle down within the point and pivot and stitch several times until you have coverage.
Tips:
A clean cut edge to your piece is always easier to cover with stitching. Use your rotary cutter and make a nice solid cut line.
Use a new topstitching #90 needle for the best stitch and for less thread breakage.
Sewers Aid applied to the thread also helps with thread breakage.
Organic quilts don’t have to be stuck in a box. A corded buttonhole binding lets your quilt go over the edge.”
This was my original article, four years ago. Here’s the secret ingredient I didn’t think to factor in. Almost all of the shapes going off the edge. What I forgot to say, is that almost all of the items going over the edge have been embroidered to a fare-the-well. That means they have 2 other layers of stitch and tear and felt. They can literally stand up of their own accord.
It does make a difference. And I hate to be someone who will give you a recipe with something essential left out.
I am excited to make quilts that are exactly the shape they should be. None of that square for the sake of square stuff.
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.
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.
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.
Today we take 16 quilts over to the Peoria Art Guild to hang the show opening next Friday night, Sept. 1st. In the rush to finish a couple more pieces, find all the unlabeled work, and get all the hangings on, the rods cut, and the cat fur off, there’s a final task that has to happen. I need to do my documentation.
There are 1,107 quilts on my price list since the 1980s. There are around 200 quilts in house. I’m not good at keeping track. I regularly find I’ve got a piece at a gallery I thought I’d lost. I don’t even panic anymore. The chances are excellent that the missing piece is safe in a store where I left it, coming home in time.
But I do have some documentation tricks that help.
photos, photos, Photos
Take full and detailed shots of your work, without Fido in the background. It helps to take process shots too.
Everything Has a Number
Each piece has a number of its own. Its number is the next sequence, plus the year it was made. That gets documented in an Excel file that has the size, and price of each quilt.
The price list is the listing for each quilt by number.
Everything has a Signature
I always sign my work. Right in the stippling. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes it’s not. But it’s always there. Yes, I can sign it backwards in case I have the cool thread in the bobbin.
Everything Has a Label
I’ve done everything for labels at one time or another: written in pen on the back, or stitched on a computerized machine. Now I run them through the computer. I use June Tailor’s Iron on Quick Fuse Fabric, an ink jet printer, and Avery’s free label printing site. I can print a sheet full of any kind of label I want and cut it out with a rotary cutter.
Labels are a safety feature. How does anyone know it’s your quilt if you don’t label it? I have a recognizable style, but it’s hubris to pretend everyone would know. Telling one quilt from another on a price list can be harder than it looks. And it has my contact information so someone can send it back to me or contact me if they should find it. I don’t send quilts out without a label.
So how do I manage to lose quilts? I’m so tired at the end of this I don’t always mark off when something sells or when it goes somewhere. The best system is subject to human error, and boy, am I human.
These are some quilts that just came home. They’re on my Etsy site on sale.
