| 1211-26 Her Royal Shyness Octopus’ Garden Series 34” x42” $3,570 Materials: Hand-dyed cotton, felt, stabilizers, commercial sheers, polyester, metallic, nylon threads, oilpaint stick Techniques: Machine pieced, machine embroidered, embroidered appliqué, quilted, texture rubbing, hand dye, cord binding, direct appliqué |
Purchase this quilt on Etsy!
| 1211-26 Drifting 44” x38″ $ 4,080 Materials: Hand-dyed cotton, felt, stabilizers, commercial sheers, polyester, metallic, nylon threads, oilpaint stick Techniques: Machine pieced, machine embroidered, embroidered appliqué, quilted, texture rubbing, hand dye, cord binding, direct appliqué |
Purchase this quilt on Etsy!
The MAP kids had their opening last night. Due to car troubles, I couldn’t be there. I’ve taught in this program, and I try to make that opening because it’s a teachable moment for the kids. They see their work celebrated on the wall, and I usually go to the opening and ask them, one by one, to show me their pieces, so I can tell them how wonderful they are. Art is hard. People aren’t always kind. We need to spread that kind of kindness prophylactically against the cruel way people treat kids art. Since I couldn’t be there I sent this note.
The MAP program is an opportunity for teens to study with a number of different artists as mentors. It’s a wide-open learning experience, not from art school, but from people living their art. It’s a free program the Peoria Art Guild offers each year to a select group of young artists.
Hit! I can’t be here tonight to celebrate with you over the wonderful things you made this year. I am so sorry. Our car broke down last night in a way that will take some time for us to get it running. I can’t get there.
I always try to come to the MAP show, because this program is fabulous. Not just the art you make. The way you remake yourself is also fabulous to watch. It’s hard to move to different media and techniques. But it hones your skills and stretches your ability. It changes you. It sets you on different paths. None of that could happen, without your courage, commitment and determination to try things. You’ve done all of that.
You will have people in your life who will either indulge your art or ignore it. They’ll tell you that it’s nice, but not practical. Or necessary. They are wrong.
Art is where we create emotional literacy. Our ability to thrive and survive comes from rewriting our stories in ways that make sense to us, that make us more able, that give us joy and peace, even in chaos, Our art does that. We interact with an image, and it retells the story. Not just for ourselves and our own growth. But we, as artists do it for others as well. People are changed by our art. It incites them with new thoughts. It heals old wounds by seeing them in different lights. We change the world with our art. It doesn’t matter how many people see our work. The person who needs to is right audience. We are the light of the world.
Tonight I hoped to walk with each of you and ask you to show me your pieces. I wanted to tell you how proud I am for you, that it was an honor to have you in class, and that I am waiting for the magnificent things you’ll do next. I hope you have the patience to grind through the practice it takes to hone your skills and find your voice. I am honored to have worked with you.
Congratulations!
All my love,
Ellen
I’m sharing this with you because perhaps you might need to hear that as well. I do too. We’re artists. We hold each other up.
You’ll find this fabulous show through July 31st.
Peoria Art Guild
203 Harrison St,
Peoria, IL, 61602,
3096372787info@peoriaartguild.org
In working on the Octopus Roclets. I’ve felt a need for angles. They just do’t stay still. And the easiest way to make something feel like it’s in movement is for it to be at an angle.
Which angle? They do read differently. I want to try an isosceles triangle, made from an elongated rectangular strip. I think it will add to the movement of the piece.
Angles mean bias. We talk about fabric being on the straight of grain. If you tore a strip off the fabric, that strip is the straight of grain. That’s a fairly stable piece of fabric. It will stretch very mildly across the width and not at all in the length.
Here’s the definitions of bias from ai on Google.
Fabric bias is any diagonal direction across a woven fabric, while the “true bias” sits at a precise 45-degree angle to the lengthwise and crosswise threads. Cutting or binding on the bias gives the fabric natural elasticity and a fluid, body-hugging drape. [1, 2, 3]
Understanding Bias
True Bias: The diagonal 45° cut between the two; this is where the fabric is most stretchy and flexible. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Lengthwise Grain: Runs parallel to the finished edge (selvage) and has almost no stretch.
Crosswise Grain: Runs perpendicular to the selvage and has slight give.
If we cut our borders across at an angle, that edge will stretch because it’s bias. We really don’t want that. Bias stretches out and makes for wavey borders and seams.
Controlling Bias
Accurate cutting will help. I need to square up my center and use my rotary cutter to make clean edges. But the secret weapon is starch.
Starching your fabric makes it stitch better. And it makes it stretch less.
Here’s the mock up I did to try this out.
Making angled borders
I used:
A center rectangle or square.
A strip of fabric twice the size of your border and a bit longer than your center piece
Liquid spray starch,I’m using Linet Starch.
Tools:
Rotary cutter, ruler and mat
Sewing machine with straight stitch and quarter-inch foot
Iron or rolling seam presser
I starched the two fabrics with a solution of 1-1 starch and water
I cut the yellow strip in half and then cut the strips fro corner to corner diagnally.
For more information about starch, see Getting Fabric Straight.
I pressed my seams with a rolling seam presser
I trimmed my edges square to make
a slightly angled background.
I’ve added shell and rock rubbings to the bottom
Here’s where we think the octopuses will go.
I’m still deciding about that. But I’m happy I tilted the background. It creates the motion I wanted.
This has been a rough week of a lot of medical appointments. Nothing bad. Just exhausting and demoralizing. So last night I had a serious dose of color therapy. I watched Yellow Submarine.
This is the best color therapy movie I know. I’d add Fantasia and Avatar to that list as well. Who cares about plot? Endless mixes of impossible color combinations. I’m still half drunk.
If you asked for a description of the color theme, I would say it’s full-color-wheel bright.
But it’s also an outrageous usage of way too many tertiary colors running amok. I’m in love.
I’ve stitched the rocket octopuses. I started with a background that reminded me of confetti yarn, bright bits of color on a soft background. So my octs had to be bright where the background was softer. I’m thinking of calling them the Octettes.
But now we’re at the fun point. We get to create the design.
This is the first pin-up. I do several pin-ups with each piece. The first pin-up is just the background and the creatures. With that pin-up, I’ll know my colors, my path and where the creatures interact with each other and the viewer.
The second pin-up is after I add the elemental bits. Usually these are sheer unless they’re rocks. Water, rock, air currents, sunlight. It’s also where I add small elements that help establish my visual path. I’m thinking gold and orange fish.
The third pin-up is my final design. After I do the third pin-up, I’m ready to stitch. And my options are in stone.
So now I can try it all out. Different backgrounds, different octs.
If it’s just one or two possibilities, I pin it up and shoot photos. Here I had a bunch of choices so I photoed the elements and put them into photoshop. It’s a cheap thrill, but it’s much less aerobic.
Here are the ones I like best. I really like the ones swimming in opposite directions. The ones weaving tentacles work best on the larger pieces of fabric. I’m still not sure.
I’ve done this before in a blog called Pin Up Girls: Family Planning for Octopuses. There I was trying out a number of different quilts. This is just one. But it is a good way of looking at options, without having to pin everything up physically.
What do you think?
I’m not a very abstract person. I’m not good at reducing forms or working without a visual reference. Of course, I’m not always wedded to reality either. I believe that when we stray from a photographic reality, who we are, what we mean, and what we see have a way of coming out to say, “Hi!” And a lot of other chatter as well.
For a long time, reality was the task of art. Up through the Renaissance to modern art, we’ve lauded the ability to make something that looks real. I find that wearing as an artist. If you want complete realism, you probably want photography. You’ll see your image just as it is. Once we had photography, realism stopped being a goal and became something accomplished.
Photography works for the surface. It fails me for movement, for mood, for expansion off the canvas, and for the feeling it gives me. I have nothing against photography. But it usually leaves me a little cold.
So once we left realism as the only goal, there was room for all kinds of experimentation.
One of the experiments was Pop Art. There were many versions of this. One was to repeat an image in rows or patterns in bright colors. This is Andy Warhol.
I’m not interested in tennis shoes, but I do want to see what happens if I put repetitious octopuses in bright colors together. This is the first octopus. The plan is to put four together. I’m not sure if I’ll use rows or weave their tentacles together.
The colors on the octopuses echo the hand-dyed fabric I’m using. They have a light source that shifts the colors through the tentacles.
Here are three more in different states of completion. When we’re done, we’ll see what pops up.
I’ve been working on the octopuses for around five months. There are seven in all, five finished. I’m pleased to say they make a good start for a show.
But I don’t want quilts that look like the same pieces, only in different colors.
What defines a work? Certainly subject matter. Certainly color. But textures also make pieces stand from with each other.
I’ve leaned heavily into oranges and blues on this collection, but I think there’s a good range of colors. The background is always the color of your sky, the mood of the piece, and its definition
The octopus’s garnet stitch texture connects the grouping.
Something more subtle separates them.
The stipple treatment establishes the movement of the water, but it also visually separates the pieces from each other.
Confession. Left to my own, I have three stipples I use. I really felt I needed to stretch a bit here, particularly because I want the quilts in this series to stand up as separate works.
Leah Day’s book, 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs has become a go-to reference for me. I don’t feel a need to copy her designs, but it’s full of a lot of stimulating ideas. It’s one of the few books I store right by my machine. It’s a worthy resource. I turned to it for some different stipple ideas.
I almost never do straight lines in my work. I’m not very good at them. But I love the bubbles and stripes here. It’s almost like wallpaper for the quilt.
Here are details of the other quilts, showing the different stipples.
Leah’s book is a lovely springboard into other possibilities. It’s available on Amazon
So I went straight on one of them and survived. Maybe I can do straight lines.
This is not the first time I’ve done three-D jellyfish. But I’ve tweeked what I did this time and I’m happier with the results. If you’d like to see the earlier attempt, they are at Jellyfish 3D Transparency
I wanted three-dimensional transparent jellyfish with opaque areas.
This technique depends on the stabilizers. But there are a number of different stabilizers that will work. They are made for very special purposes.
This time I made my stitching sandwiches out of a layer of Totally Stable for my drawing, Paper Solvy, lace or organza, and Badgemaster, All the stabilizers except the Totally Stable will dissolve out of the work. What I want when I’m done is a clean outline and edge, with some white areas and some transparent.
You can make an image just with your stitching. But you have to make sure all of the stitching connects with itsself or it will fall apart when the stabilizers are gone. Instead, I used commercial nylon lace and organza as the fabric
What do those stabilizers do?
The order of the sandwich was, from top to botton, Badgemaster, organza or lace, Paper Solvy, and Totally Stable. Snce we’re working upside down, Totally Stable drawing layer is on top where we can see it.
The threads I chose were a polyester white top thread and a Cristalyn white metallic in the bobbin. The metallic is more fragile, and that is why I have it in the bobbin. I chose white because the background is so dark, and I wanted them to shine out. All of the stitching is done from the back.
You’ll notice that I used 2 different magic markers for my drawings. That was an error. Even with all the stitching, the marker colors showed through. I don’t mind either the blue or the orange, but they don’t work together in the same piece.
These are all stitched free motion from the back.
Outline the image. Freemotion zigzag.
Remove any of the Totally Stable parts you want to be see-through. Score them with a pin and pull them out.X
Use a straight stitch to texture the jelly.
Remove the excess Paper Solvy and Totally Stable from around the pieces.
Stitch around the edge with a zigzag to stabilize them.
Cut away all the excess stabilizer
I edge-stitch again just to give them a more solid edge.
The Paper Solvy and the Badgmaster need to be dissolved in hot water.
Badgemaster is starch. So I took the trimmed off scraps,dissolved them in water, and dipped the jellies to give them that hard starched edge. I dried them on freezer paper. Notice that the orange jelly is the one that was drawn in orange. I need to rethink my mmarkers.
We’re ready to roll with the 3rd pin up on Octopus 5. I believe we’ll call it, Rock, Paper, Shark.
This has been a week of downtime. Don and I have both had the flu, and we took off studio time. I’ve progressed on 3 octopus quilts, taking them from the pin-up into sewn-down reality. But those two states don’t look very different. So I don’t have much show and tell this week.
Years ago, a mentor of mine told me that when you are young, you pick up everything like you’re in a candy shop. What defines us in the end is not what we take up, but what we put down.
I have a rotating hobby selection. I tat. I crochet. I play ukulele. I garden. I tweak recipes. I’m rarely on one thing or another for very long. I do cycle back to hobbies when I need something fresh.
All of these things are artistic. They’re fun. They fill up time. None of them is art.
I believe in art. I believe everyone is an artist. I believe it to be inherent to being human. Art is how we make sense out of our experiences. It reaches way past media. We work it out in music, in painting, in sculpture, in fiber, or in writing. We retell our stories. Within the retelling, we craft our world into something we can live with. We recraft ourselves. If one path closes, another opens to carry this on. I balance between writing and my art. In purpose, they are essentially the same.
Hobbies are about filling time. We entertain ourselves, we learn, we grow. They are a pleasure if we’ve chosen well. Distraction at worst. I am never all that good at my hobbies. I never engage enough to become good at them. But they bring me joy, entertain me, and get me through bad spots. I think everyone should have a bevy of hobbies as a coping mechanism. I keep telling Don, yarn is cheaper than therapy. Hobbies may not be necessary. But they do spread oil on the gears.
Art isn’t optional. It’s a day-to-day struggle to understand what’s going on.
I cant say I understand my art. I sometimes do in time. I know an image gets in my head and I have to work with it. Once I have, something in me settles. I’ve changed myself by engaging with the image.
But before that, I crammed in all kinds of art experiences. I did batik, clay sculpture. I sewed everything I wore except my shoes and my bras. I made stained glass. At some point, Mary Annis gave me a quilt she rescued from our trash can. I’ve quilted ever since.
That was it. What defined me after that was what I put down. Nothing mattered like quilting.
When did my quilting turn into my art? Like most things, it’s hard to see the source. I really don’t know.
At some point, I started taking my quilt to my therapy appointments.I think that probably defines it.
What do the octopuses mean? I think I’m talking about the ability to multitask, think in different ways, and move like smoke and ocum, all of which I desperately wish I could do.
Is it my work? Is it my vocation?
Everything eventually turns into work. There’s the day you have to bind something. The day 6 small quilts are due, and none of them finished. It may be fun. It may not. But you need to get it done.
Also, if you’re going to live off your art, it inevitably becomes work. There’s a lot of perspiration and much less inspiration. You are producing a product. Often, that’s smaller, less exciting pieces. They are worthy. They pay for bread and butter. It’s what you love, but it also has to get done.
Why should people buy art? Because it changes the buyer, too. It makes you laugh, or hope, or cry, or giggle. It opens your heart and your mind. It also supports artists, so they can continue to create the things that change them, change you, and change the world.
So the lines aren’t that strictly drawn. My hobbies are my entertainment. My art, I do for my soul. I love it all, but at some point, you just need to get things done. Work may be a four letter word. But it’s not the worst of them.
So don’t tell me I have a nice hobby. Welcome to my art.
