textile

Shadow on the shore: Making a shadow from Organza

| ellenanneeddy

For some while I’ve been wanting to make reflections in water, and work with shadows. I also have usually only done river and pond water. This image made me want to break out into shore surf. The heron has her wings up, so that they distort the shadow and the fish won’t see her.

I’m a bit uneasy about what the surf should look like. So I did some research. I love Japanese art, and looked through some imagery on waves on shore. Sometimes it helps to have a good idea what something looks like. These drawings were great waves. They gave me a place to start.

I broke down the drawings into simple shapes. And I cut them in a lot of different blues, and a specific glistening white.

But I needed to make the shadow. There may be more sophisticated ways to do this, but I traced the embroidery onto Steam a Seam 2.

I’ve changed backgrounds a lot on this. I finally settled on something a bit brighter, so you could see sand and sky.

The first one I cut was purple. It simply wasn’t dark enough.

Black glitter tulle worked better. I patted on some glitter tulle and cut the shape out.

I cut out wave shapes and layered them together.

The sky is pure sun headed into greenery, and I didn’t want to do something bold with it. Instead, I added spirals heading from gold to green to feel like the sun shimmering down.

I’m pleased with this although I haven’t ironed it down yet. The placing of the heron is really delicate. So I’m looking at it for a while before I commit.

Things to know about layering sheers:

Sheers may look different once you’ve ironed them. Have a test piece so you know what it will look like.

Your Steam a Seam 2 will make your needle skip if it’s not ironed down properly. That’s harder to do with multiple layers. And if you use lace the glue will come through

Layered sheers take more ironing to stick. But you don’t want to melt them. Use a no stick pressing cloth to iron them down and clean it after each piece is ironed. I use a non-stitck Scotch-Brite Scrubby. When you are all done, lay a piece of cotton scrap over the top of it and iron on hot. The excess glue will melt into the scrap. Make sure you don’t transfer glue from the scrap to your piece.

Sheers make wonderful shadows. I’ll stitch all this down with monofilament nylon so there are no hard edges, just shadow, sun and sea.

IRidescent by Accident

| ellenanneeddy

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.