wall hanging

Gilding the Lily: Adorning Fabric Rubbings

| ellenanneeddy

A couple of weeks ago, I did a series of small rubbing pieces. I use rubbing plates and oil paint stick. I focused on different backgrounds, flowers, bees, dragonflies and butterflies. It’s an endless river of design choices in a tiny scale.

I’ve loved working with tiny pieces. It’s nice to have a quick result, and they’ve proved to be popular. Who wouldn’t want a delightful piece of art that fits everywhere and doesn’t cost much.

The rubbing plates I’ve been using are a limit of sorts. I still haven’t figured out how to make my own. I will. I want it bad enough, I’ll do it.

But I’ve enjoyed working with these flower plates to stretch what they might be.

But there’s another side. It’s soothing to spend a couple days just stitching. The rhythm of the machine, the movement of design, and the feeling of watch thread flow from the needle to the fabric all create a tao that’s gotten me through endless tough times. Demanding focus to actually color in the lines is very good for me. A lot of my stitching can be mindless. This is not. I have to try to hit the line.

I’m going to show you some of these before and after I’ve stitched them. It’s a magical change that always thrills me.

They are transformed by stitching. They’re lovely, just as fabric rubbings but they change in amazing ways, once they’ve been stitched.

These are supposed to be waterlilies. But with some background and color changes, I think they make fine Dahlias.

These are supposed to be forget me nots.

But I love them as carnations

But there’s another side. It’s a place to explore and work with colors differently and stitches differently. Not endless change, but small differences not tried before. Is there anything I haven’t tried. Of course there is. Move it over a quarter of an inch and add peach, and I’ll bet I’ve never done it before.

I’ll be finishing these little quilts in a day or two, and they’ll go up on the website and onto Etsy for sale. You’ll find tutorials on rubbings and stitching on the video page.

Take time to try things out in little ways or big ones, as your work needs. It feels great to stretch a bit.

Over and Over Again: Ladybugs, and the Need for Serieous Work

| ellenanneeddy

No. I did not misspell that. All art, all creative process is a journey where we ask questions about design, color, shape, materials and techniques. Each piece we do is an answer for the question. Do I make a big moon or a small one? Out of Angelina Fiber? Or tulle? Or that strange gold brocade I just brought home? Do I make rays? Or a big circle, or spirals woven into each.

How do you do the black and white parts of a ladybug? Bobbin work again, but showing different directions.

Put them all together and they make a series. Series work helps us answer a billion and one questions.

There are no right or wrong answers. But each quilt gives you other questions to try. And since experience is the best teach, each quilt is a new experience, even if you will never do it again. Try a new thread. Will it work from the top or shall I put it in the bobbin? This machine likes this kind of poly monofilament. Will it work better with a cone holder? Horizontal or vertical? Endless questions that can only be answered by an endless dance of doing.

But the other reason is fascination. We regularly explore bits of the world that fascinate us. I’m fascinated by bugs of all kinds, but in red? Red? Where’s the red?

Well of course, I now have a reason to explore all those reds together. What if she isn’t really red?

Do I find repetition boring? NO! I find repetition changes everything as we put together the puzzle of each piece

So, if there’s something I don’t know the answer to, I sit down with a pile of new work that just might give me the answer. I’m not repeating myself? I’m on a journey. Who knows what I’ll find.

Astro Thread: Variagated Threads in Stippling

| ellenanneeddy

Just pinned in place

I’m on the home stretch with my guinea hens. My working title is What the Flock? But there’s a temptation to call it Coffee Hour. If you have a better idea, let me know.

One of the last things I do with a quilt is the stipple. I don’t mean just the pattern of stippling. I mean the filling in of the background with stitchery.

Stipple in process

It’s pretty mandatory. If you do the kind of stitching involved in embroidered applique, you need to connect the rest of the piece with some kind of stitching. So the last act is stippling the surface of the quilt.

This quilt has a split light source. We talked about that earlier in Splitting the Sky. It doesn’t have a lot of dramatic color change through the piece, nor does it need it. So I’ve decided on a stipple with Astro through.

I love Astro threads. Beautiful multi-colored threads that sing across the surface of a quilt in stippling. They shade a quilt top beautifully.

I also hate astro threads for shading an object. I get seduced every time. I look at the range of colors I have, decide that I could fit in an astro thread to add to the shading. Then I finish, turn it over and run for the stitch eraser.

Why does it work that way? Several reasons. It depends on just what color the threads are and how often the threads change color. Some astro threads come in a two color spread. That’s easier to handle for shading. It tends to blend the two shades. Shading requires that thread be at least within the range of the value (lightness and darkness). If it swings too far one way or the other, then the color range will shift farther than you’d like.

Most Astro threads are roygbv. They tend to go through a large chunk of the rainbow. That’s really pretty for stippling. But the colors end up in odd spots on your embroidery. And if there’s a color that doesn’t blend in within the mix, it’s painful.

I wanted a metallic thread for the background stipple on this piece. I decided between two metallic threads from Madiera

Madeira has two multicolor metallic lines. Supertwist Astro is a shiny flecked thread. FS Metallic has a black core and looks like beadwork. Both of those seemed like good stipple options for this quilt. Peacock, the black version is almost the same in both threads except that the Astro one has pink in it and the FS has red.

I also wanted to try a zigzag stipple. I like that a lot for some pieces. It’s a different texture.

I expected to like the zigzag more than the straight stitch. But the smoother shapes make something more like the dirt barnyard texture.

I often do a sample like this, if I’m not sure. It solves the question before I stitch in. But I like the FS straight stitch best. The Supertwist is shinier, but it has an unfortunate pink in it.

So I’m partway through the stipple in the peacock FS thread. You’ll get to see it when it’s done. It’s a pretty big barnyard, but it’s shiny.

How Many Yellow birds Do You Need? Mathematics for Batch Quilting

| ellenanneeddy

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know that I’m into batch quilting. I do almost all of my embroideries as separate components which I apply to the quilt top. That gives me the freedom to design more organically and to change plans on a dime.

It also has its limits. I draw things for my embroideries. That doesn’t always mean they fit into the design at the end. Not to worry. There’s always another quilt, and there’s always a need for more bugs, birds, flowers, frogs, and anything else I end up batching.

Small batch elements are excellent for creating a visual path within the piece. They server as stepping stones between larger elements that help carry the eye through the piece. They need to be relatively small and bright to do that.

Bright is a flexible definition. In a blue stream, small copper-brown rocks are bright. A piece of lime yarn on a blue-green background is bright. It’s a matter of contrast. For the last three quilts, I’ve been fixated on small yellow birds. First I did ones in flight and then ones perched.

How many do I need? I ended up stitching another batch when I discovered the ones with blue tail feathers disappeared on the sunflower background. It turned into a pile.

But that’s good. I got the major elements settled on the piece and put the yellow birds in place to generate movement.

It can be bold or subtle. Simply aiming the birds so they’re interacting with each other or with the ladybugs I sprinkled in, creates a line of action within the work.

So how many do I need? I really don’t want to get half through the design and find I need to embroider another batch of birds. How many can I make before I’m bored? The only limit is my attention span.

I’ve finally figured out that it’s worth my trouble to trace out my patterns so I have them left over. I also flip them so I have them in two directions. I probably won’t use the same bird in the same quilt, but often they do look very different after they’re embroidered. It’s actually pretty much the same amount of time by way of setup to embroider 12 birds as 6. The stitching is its own time, but that cuts thread set up dramatically. I spend days doing just mushrooms, or frogs or yellow birds.

It’s changed how I work. It’s changed how I think. And it’s changed my output dramatically.

And then there are all of those wonderful leftovers. You can always use another ladybug or frog. For a small work, it can be the focus itself. There really isn’t any waste. Even if I get tired and stop within the process, I have a nice batch of almost finished bits I can use in the next creation.

How many yellow birds did I make? I believe around 20. I forgot to count. Some of them were orange, so does that count as yellow?

Now. Do I keep the worm?

For more information about batch quilting, see Batch Quilting: How Many Quilts Do You Have Unquilted?

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.

What the Flock?: Textures for Very Brown Birds

| ellenanneeddy

Nature loves camouflage. A great deal of nature is brown. Brown isn’t necessarily boring, but it does have a way to go to be showy.

There are tricks for that. All brown is made up of complementary mixes. Red and green make brown. Yellow and purple make brown. The cool thing about it is that they don’t make the same browns. Although any complementary pair you choose is essentially a primary color and a secondary color, everything is made from the primaries themselves. Every brown is made of yellow, red, and blue. But the mixes aren’t quite the same and the glory is in the details.

So we can mix brown with thread, as easily as we could mix it with paint.

But past that. brown shows up as neutral. Which means it hasn’t much impact. So what can we do to add interest? Add texture.

I’ve worked on bird feathers for a couple of years now. It’s kind of a quest. In the same way there are stipple patterns, there are shading patterns. I’m working on those to try to create the different feathers on birds.

Pinion feathers

Every bird has different kinds of feathers for different reasons. Pinions to support flight. Fluff for warmth. Tiny feathers that cover skin. They are very different in texture.

Fluff

This is a texture for the fluff feather I’m trying out here. It’s a different shape that gives us the feather feeling.

I’m also using a long/short stitch as a fill-in for the breast. It fills in with different colors, giving a bird that stripey look.

The feet are done with three colors of threads in an uneven grid.

Finally, to crisp up the image, I outlined it in a bright cream.

After all of that, the birds are still brown. But the heads sort of fixed that for me. They really are that blue. How cool is that!

Repetition: The Nervous Person’s Friend

| ellenanneeddy

There’s a lot of repetition in any form of art. There’s that moment of ignition, those moments of planning, and pretty soon, you come down to those hours of creation. And they’re full of repetition. Small tasks over and over.

If it sounds like purgatory of a sort, it is. It’s infinately better than the hell of an overactive imagination on a bad day. Repetitious art has saved my life more than once.

Part of it is that repetitious actions put us in a different mode and zone. It’s been called right brain thinking, but I think it needs the reinforcement of physical action, particularly action that doesn’t take a lot of thought.

It may be borking but like everything there is an upside. Art is about need. Need to express yourself, need to fill up space, need for stimulation all turns itself into artwork, given the right emphasis. How would I know? What do you think?’

I’ve kind of had a tough couple of months, but it’s been mostly about friends. We’re all in that just-turned-70 club. Paul Simon was right. “How terribly strange to be seventy.” It is. All of a sudden there are serious things wrong with all of us.v All of a sudden we’re old.

There’s nothing to be done about it. Time doesn’t stop. The warantee runs out. We’re all there, in a way. All we can do is to refuse to run away from each other, no matter how bad it gets.

I’m trying to figure out what I do with this. If you’re one of the people I’m talking about, you can know this. I won’t run and I won’t hide. We’re in this together.

Thank God for repetition. For mindless tasks that eventually build art. They also bring quiet, piece, peace and courage.

On the other side, enough blue, purple, orange and yellow is an excellent color therapy. Color really is an antidepressant.

Using My Enemy Color: Getting Over Pink

| ellenanneeddy

My mother made sure I had a pink bedroom as a girl. But being herself and a sophisticat, she made it brown and that orangy pink that only the fifties could love. Between that and pink being a color for silly girls, I wrote pink off. Magenta, yes. Fuschia of course. But no baby pink ever!

When we were 5 my cousin Peggy and I decided that yellow was our enemy color. We would never wear yellow beause of that. We had a point. It didn’t flatter either of us. Yellow was the enemy.

Yellow is still unflattering, and I still won’t wear it. But I have come to a truce with it. The truth is, you can’t just cut yourself off from a color as an artist.The world is full of colors and they all need each other no matter how you feel about them. You need them all. Which brings me to my other enemy color, pink.

Except that you really can’t do that. Sooner or later there will be a reason for every color. And you’ll need it in your crayon box.

I could have never used pink if I hadn’t found roseated spoonbills.

I’ve been in love with dinosaurs all my life. When paleantologists started talking about birds coming directly in line from dinosaurs, I went on a bird binge. Particularly the big water birds that clearly are dinosaurs. I’m still there. I loved there odd legs and wings and bills.

I’d worked with herons before. And I still love them. But the roseated spoonbills were unabashedly pink. And clearly dinosaurs. They turned my world upside down enough to use baby pink.

Pink or not, I couldn’t help myself. Maybe it’s the bill. Or the long stalky legs. Or the idea that something very old is still marvelous and wonderful, and part of our world. I can relate.

If it makes something that wonderful I’ll use baby pink and coral pink, seashell pink, flesh pink. For a roseated spoonbill, anything.

Do you have a color you just don’t like? Be brave. Embrace it. It maybe the only thing that makes what you want come to life. Mix it in with other things and watch it show you where it’s place in the world is.

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.