textiles

Another Fishy Story: Thoughts on Color Range

| ellenanneeddy

I’m working on another fish quilt. I’m not sure quite how these fish will go together, but I’m aiming for three different colorations out of the same color range.

I wanted gold fish. But good fish are not made of the same gold. Why? Well, seven fish all colored identically seems fishy to me. The nature of nature is variance.

So I pulled a range of colors that went through yellow greens and orange golds.

Coloration is about filling in space to a large degree. A large space accommodates a large range of colors. Usually colors are set with a base dark color, a shadow color, a range of progressively lighter colors, a shocker color and a lightest shade on top as a highlight. Except when it’s not. That works very well with large areas.

Fish have scales which usually aren’t that large. Usually there’s room for a base color, a shader, a center color, a shocker and then a highlight. This gets more limited as the fish get smaller.

For each of the small fish there’s a base color, a shader, the next brighter color, a softer shader and the next brightest color. I’m putting a shocker around the eye and in the bottom fins.

So I’ve done four fish in red/green, yellow/purple, orange/blue, and yellow orange/ purple, to explore the progressions on this. You’ll notice all the shaders are complements.

It’s a trick to have a number of elements in a quilt with different colors to match each other in tone. Since I’m choosing threads off the neon fluorescent chart, that kind of takes care of that.

There are three large fish, but I wanted to do several fish in the full range. Here are process shots on four of them.

Fish One

Fish Two

Fish Three

Fish Four

Notice what a difference in makes to outline them for the second time! The stitching inevitably creeps over the outline, so they need to be crisped up, sort of like fish sticks.

So here are the fish in process, small ones finished large ones left to go on the background. I worried about them feeling too different, but the range gives them variation without seeming like they don’t belong.

Part of why they all work together is that the color relationships are complements. That makes the color impacts similar.





























The Public Eye: Out there in front of Everyone

| ellenanneeddy

Yesterday we had the Pop Up Sale at the Galesburg Art Center. The center is a grand old historic building with much of it’s history in evidence, but the people are warm real artists with wide minds and smiles. It’s been a long time for me.

In your studio, your art is whatever you think it is. Good or bad. Honest or ludicrous. I’ve found those judgements change in a heart beat according to mood and blood sugar. Once you put a piece out where people can see it, there’s a whole other evaluation outside yourself.

I’ve lived a lot of my life out in public. You don’t travel and teach the way I did in a box. There’s a value in that, and a value in sacred space that no one intrudes in such as a studio. The real value is in the balance between.

Thank you everyone who came yesterday to visit! Thank you, Tuesday, for inviting me to show there. And thank you Don for your endless patience and support.

Don’t Panic? Prepping a Quilt Show

| ellenanneeddy
Me? Panic?

I am happy to announce two events. I have the first couple of showings I’ve had in 10 years.

Open Studio: Quilted Tapestries of
Ellen Anne Eddy
Saturday, August 27th
Quilts, tapestries, books and hand dyed fabrics available for sale!

Hours:- Saturday 9AM – 3 PM
Contact: Ellen Anne Eddy 219-617-2021 Galesburg Art Center, 309-640-0005

Birds of a Feather: Quilted Tapestries by
Ellen Anne Eddy
Cove Center, Havana, IL

The Cove Center, in Havana, IL announces Birds of a Feather, a show of quilted nature tapestries by Ellen Anne Eddy August 30  through September, 30th 2022.
The Cove Center is in the Wahlfeld Building at
120 N. Plum St., downtown Havana Illinois.
Hours: Monday – Saturday 8 AM – 1PM
CLOSED SUNDAYS
~Gallery Opening: September 2nd 4 – 8 PM
Contact: Ellen Anne Eddy 219-617-2021Cove Center: 309-640-0005

Splash!

How do I feel about all of this? I haven’t hung a show in ten years. I’m past panicked.

Now, for an artist, panic is your friend. It’s the thing that helps you through the hoop of finishing, binding, hangers, signage and all the little details you remember the night before the opening. Along with raw terror, there’s all that extra energy if you can harness it. By now I’ve run out of steam and Steam a Seam 2 and most of my larger fabric chunks. My friend, Deborah Christman kindly embroidered a Don’t Panic towel In support.

But here’s the cool thing. I have, due to show panic and a small amount of hysteria, 15 new quilts and two new series to show.

So it’s not like I don’t have something to show. Or cool new work for sale. Please come join me! If you can’t make those dates, call and we can make a time for you to see things at the studio. Let me know what you think about the new work. And buy a quilt if you fall in love with one. I’m still out of Steam a Seam.

Seeing Right Through: Applique with Sheers

| ellenanneeddy
Splash! in process

I know it’s not supposed to be quilter’s fabric. Sorry. I can’t leave it alone. It’s too much fun to play with test tube babies. Over the years I’ve collected a special stash of laces, organzas, chiffons, brocades and just plain weird stuff.

It’s not anything I would piece. But no one would call me a piecer so that’s moot. But it’s wonderful for the things in this world that are, by nature transparent and/or translucent. I’ve talked earlier about finishing sheer edges with a soft edge finish, Sun Rocks, Wind, Water: Elements with Soft Edges.

But there are times you want that edge to show. Edging lace and sheer applique is a way of not only defining the edge of the applique but of controlling the color and controlling exactly how transparent it is.

I’m working on some moonflowers and some snow drops for a quilt called Splash. The quilt features a dark mostly blue background, and I wanted glowing white flowers for the background. Moonflowers are morning glories that bloom only at night. They’re perfect.

It’s also a way of lightening a darker quilt.

I used both lace and organza for my flowers. I do like them to have small differences, so they have their own individuality. Then I placed them with Steam a Seam 2 on a piece of white felt, with some green leaves. Why felt? It’s a spectacular stabilizer, with a layer of Stitch and Tear underneath. Why white? Because it’s all going to show. Whatever color felt I put under the lace will show through and define the color of the finished flowers. Organza will show through the most, lace less so, and Angelina fiber the least.

Knowing that is power. Felt comes in a full Crayola box of colors and it allows me an extra layer of shading in the process. The thread I use will also define the colors and shade things into darks and lights. Here’s a collection of flowers with different backing felt colors.

white over pail blue
angelina fiber
white over pale blue
white over pink
white over white
White on White
white over turquoise

I use a number of pastels as well as different whites to stitch the edges to give depth. As usual, it’s darker where the sun isn’t shining.

shading the flower

I stitched the flowers with a free motion zigzag. Here’s a little video showing how that works.

I did these moonflowers separately from the piece because they’re relatively large and would have distorted the surface. But for the smaller snowdrops, I applied them directly with Steam a Seam ad then stitched on them directly. The cool thing about this is that the background peeks through, like all translucent flowers. It’s a cool effect.

snowdrops directly on the fabric

And it’s a great reason to play with sparkle lace. There should always be a reason for sparkle lace!

Thermal Shock: Shocking Color Choices

| ellenanneeddy

One of the hardest things in embroidery work is to get over the match instinct. After years of perfectly matching thread to my project, I’ve had to learn to pick out the highest contrast threads to make an image that really shows up.

In embroidery, contrast is everything. If it all mushes together color-wise then you have a very mushy image indeed. Smooth color exchanges that are analogous and sit next to each other on the color wheel are pretty. But they don’t have much punch. So what you want is color that builds not on similarities but on differences. There are several kind of contrast: color, tone, clarity, and temperature.

Today we’re talking about color ,which is simply the hue. Is it red, blue, or yellow? Or an odd shade of green? It’s not a simple as it looks. There a million reds, blues and yellows and they are not the same.

Thermal shock is about the temperature of a color. Every color, no matter whether it is a cool or warm color, leans either towards having a cool or warm cast. It doesn’t matter if it’s a cool color or a warm color. There are cool yellows, there are hot blues. If all the colors are either cool or warm they’ll flow into each other like analogous colors. But if they’re not? You get thermal shock. Like standing in a cold water sprinkler on a steaming hot day. The effect is kind of visually electric.

Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green is an excellent book discussing thermal variations and how that creates differing colors.

I wanted this fish to jump off the surface and I’d decided on yellow, to give it some definition from the floral like background. But I wanted it showy. So the colors I picked, cool orange, cool and warm yellows, cool and warm blues left it shimmery and gave it impact.



Of course it helps if you have shocking thread to begin with. This particular florescent is a Madeira polyester 40# called Poly Neon. Neon has a around 800 colors of every hue, but it has a select section that really is neon. I went through my collection of those threads and chose my shockers.

fish scales
Face
Tail

Each scale on this fish has a blue outer ridge, a purple, and 2 yellows. It’s been shaded in gradations to create the underside separately from the top.

The face and tail are a looser gradation that just shades from darkest/brightest to softer shades.

Here’s a video showing how that’s stitched.

I’ve written a lot about color because it matters to me. Building color in threadwork is done shade by shade, one color on top of another. The eye mixes those colors, which keeps them clear and crisp. But when the colors are fire and ice, prepare to be shocked!

Other blogs discussing color

Lighting the Spark

One Thousand Crayons

Why is that Fish Glowing?

Canva has an excellent page on color theory.

You’ll find Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green on Amazon.

Polyneon Threads are available at Madeira USA

Hard Edge Applique: Redefining the Line

| ellenanneeddy

We talked earlier about soft edge applique. Soft edge is a minimal treatment that simply covers the edge of an applique with monofilament nylon or poly thread with a zigzag stitch. For things like water, air, fire, rocks, mist, suns and moons it’s perfect. Sometimes it’s good for flower petals as well. It’s for anything that doesn’t need a hard defining edge. It creates soft color shifts across the quilt.

But some things need that edge. Bugs, birds, frogs and fish all need that hard definition. Or you can’t really see them at a distance. And it makes a huge difference when you go to photo your piece.

You know I’m a color girl. I’m going to want to use color every time I can. But over the years I have learned, if you want it to stand out, use the black for an outline.

green outline
black outline

I particularly have tried it with bugs. Metallic thread green thread always gets my attention, and I reach for it much in the way you might reach for cherry cordial chocolates. But I’m mildly disappointed with it in the end, because it never gives as defined a space.

basic outline

I’ve been working on this egret, and the my process shots reminded me how important that outline is. Again, I’ve been working on doing a dimensional white bird, so it has a lot of contrast underneath to shade to white on the top.

The bare bones outline define the areas to shade with color. I’ve come to rely on 40 weight Madeira Poly neon. It comes in several blacks, but the definitive one is color #1800. I’m using a free motion zigzag stitch to outline, which is why the width is variable. (See post Zigging Upended for a tutorial on zigzag stitch).

I build color, from dark to light from the outline. For more information about choosing those colors, check out this post: Into White: The Search for White Thread Painting. But it’s coloring within the lines. As you can guess, I’m not so good at that. The threads encroach over the line and things get mushy. So the final act is that reoutline.

Redefining the outline

You can see the difference that second outline makes. All the edges that are fuzzed and mussy are now tightened up and out there.

The outside edges will be defined as I stitch the bird down. But having the inner edges cleaned with an extra edge of stitchery redefines all the lines.

finished egret

When I applique the bird on, again I’ll use my zigzag stitch with black thread. It gives the outline definition and punch and helps separate the bird from the background.

Serieous Work: Dancing Trees: If I Can’t Move That Way, They Can

| ellenanneeddy
Fall Fanfair
Fall Fanfair

My mother gave me dancing trees. We were in a train at Christmas time watching out the window when she told me, “Look Ellen, they’re dancing.”

690Fall Fanfair detail

I’ve never gotten over that. They’re still dancing.

Dancing is its own miracle. Life is a dance, and hopefully, we learn to move in it.

Not all of us do. I was taught not to move. Sitting very quietly was much safer. Instead, I lived in my head and my hands.

But it was in high school that I learned not to dance. It seems people’s mores disappear on the dance floor. It was worse than not being asked. It involved being thrown in to the bleachers. Too humiliating to try again. I’m told I should get over that. I have and I haven’t.

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

My friends, Donna and Roy Hinman gave me back dancing. They ran a contra dance party once a month. Contra is a gentle Ring around the Rosie game for grownups. It was wonderful to move with everyone and be a part of it. Slowly they coaxed me back into the dance.

A life time of not moving is hard to translate into a life of movement. I was able to dance at my wedding. I move in my water aerobic classes. I’m limited by age, wear and tear. But if I can’t always dance, my trees can.