Pump It Up: Where Size Matters

| ellenanneeddy

I never used to think about how a quilt would be viewed. Was it pretty? Did it move? Did it tell a story? Did it change people to see it? I never thought about how the size of the space around it affects what the viewer sees.

Now I’m keenly aware of the space a quilt will hang in. I don’t have any control over that when I sell a quilt. It goes where the owner wishes. It becomes part of their house and their lives.

But small work is viewed differently, just by definition. Small work is made to be examined. You come up close to see it. Every detail matters and is exposed.

Unfortunately, most small work isn’t really that visible at a distance. It’s made to be intimate. Your relationship with it is within its small space. It fills a tiny space with an explosion of color and detail.

Larger works have a harder task. Done well, they will pull you from across the room. The movement and the color should sweep you in. But once you’re up close, the detail should amaze you.

When I first started using rubbed fabric in pieces, they were all experiments. I worked very small, partially to learn and partially to see how they would be received. I was limited by the size of the rubbing plates. The largest were under a square foot.

I’ve worked hard to find alternatives since then. I’ve used ceiling tiles and texturized surfaces. I’ve learned to make my own rubbing plates from modeling paste using stencils. So my options have expanded not only in size but in possibilities.

With these octopus quilts, I’m using the rubbings as objects themselves, rather than backdrops. Mostly, I did seashells and jellyfish.

I love the rubbings I’ve done for this. But they need something to pump them up to be seen across the room.

I usually use straight stitch #40 poly thread to match and shade the rubbings. That’s exquisite on a small piece. It’s almost invisible at a distance. So how do we pump it up?

I chose to stitch my jellyfish in white. I rarely use white. It’s too bossy. But for this piece, white thread pumps the jellyfish up.

I chose to outline with a very small zigzag. It’s a subtle difference. But it does define the line.

For the seashells, I did not outline. Their shapes were visible enough.

The downside of this much stitching is that I have some distortion. We can fix that. Where’s my iron?

We’re ready to back and bind.

Tax Sale

| ellenanneeddy

We got hit with an unexpected and awful tax bill. So all my quilts are on sale.

New, old, large, tiny quilts all available at the best prices.

I don’t ever want to ask for money. Instead, I offer you my very best work at my very best price. If you’ve wanted a quilt of mine, this is the time. I’m also open to offers.

Thanks!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ellenanneeddy

Making Rocky Roads: Rocks Out of Cheesecloth

| ellenanneeddy
texturized pebbles

Once I find something that works, I tend to stick to it. A creature of habit, like anyone else. What pushes me out of the box? Mistakes! Misorder! An inability to find what I need! Basically, it takes a catastrophe. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be a big catastrophe for it to do the job.

I really love using rocks in my work. They weigh a piece. They can form a visual line. They add a dark shadow or highlights depending on your color choices that frames the piece. They identify the bottom of a piece.

972 Shelter from the Storm unstitched rocks

I’ve used hand-dye for years for rocks. It already has that mottled texture and color. I used to soft edge the appliqué so the edges weren’t as obvious, but I’ve come to like the shading I can do with black thread. Inner shading works better with a straight stitch. Outside edge works best with a thin zigzag top, and a heavier shaded bottom.

texturized rocks

I sat down and started cutting rocks for the Octopus surround and realized, I didn’t have enough rock fabric. I dye greys and browns specifically for rocks, But there is almost never enough. And greys and browns are regular backing colors I use all the time. But if you’re working on three quilts at once, that’s a lot of rocks.

They also need to be differing colors. Rocks are never all the same. That’s part of their charm. They need to fit well enough to be identified as rocks, but they need a separate individuality to work.

Earlier this year, I ordered a box of cheesecloth. I use dyed cheesecloth for leaves, flowers, and other translucent things. I bought a box of cheesecloth at Joann’s every year or so. That cheesecloth was a uniform open weave,

Now that Joann’s is gone, I found that cheesecloth is graded in sizes by the number of threads per inch. Makes sense. It’s how we class thread and fabric.

I overestimated and ended up with a much tighter weave of cheesecloth. At first, I thought it wasn’t a problem. Then I realized it was much less transparent and much more like regular cotton.

I’d dyed a batch that sat on my table for a long time. It lacked the same transparent grid of the lighter-weight cheesecloth, and didn’t do the texture of leaves as well.

When I went to clear the table, there it was, in about a dozen browns and greys.

So if I use cheesecloth for rocks, what changes? I have to choose a background that will show through. The weave will show through as a grid of sorts, but that can be pulled in different directions and stretched.

Normally, I stitch my rocks on black felt, because it gives me an edge that fits with the stitching. If it’s all backed in felt, it should work.

Interestingly enough, what changes is how the stitching looks. Straight stitching sinks into the texture of the cheesecloth and is less visible. But the cheesecloth makes it more textured.

I’m not sold on cheesecloth for rocks, but I think it works here. I can always stitch heavier.

A Series of Lessons

| ellenanneeddy

Over the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a series of fish in the waters. This is an important symbol for me. It explores surviving strange waters, rising out of the depths, swimming with the current, and swimming against the current. It’s about flowing water and changes. It really checks all my boxes. It also serves as a connection with my father, whose religion was bass fishing. Since going fishing made better people than going to church, I respect it deeply, even if I won’t eat fish. I live in water.

So I noodle at the fish-in-the-water image often. If you’ve been following the blog, you know I made one quilt I loved, and I wanted to see whether I could recreate the energy. Not the fish or the river, but the energy of the piece.

Epic fail. I made a very nice other piece with similar hand dye, a fish I drew 5 times before I was pleased, and similar oil paint stick rubbing for the forest in the background. I hated the first fish I embroidered. I stitched a more active catfish, that was better.

Then I took a break and went to find the studio floor. Again. Everything flutters to the floor except the things that go clunk.

There it was, the best background for the embroidered fish I rejected. The fabric made a vortex, so I did too, out of stitching a swirl of sheers.

I didn’t learn anything technical from the exercise. But I did confirm what I already knew. It does me no good to recreate something. Another piece will need different components and approaches. I didn’t need to be making arbitrary rules for myself. I needed to listen to each piece to give it what it needs. If I thought I was in control, that was delusional.

Maybe this is a right-brain, left-brain thing. I’ve been struggling to organize both in the house and the studio. That’s a very left side of the brain thing to do. It’s foreign thinking, but it’s less grim than Swedish Death Cleaning. You know what? No one ever did teach me this. Certainly not my mother.But that shouldn’t stop me. If you don’t know how, you can learn.

So cleaning does turn into art. Eventually.

As Don says, “I’m a man. I can change. If I have to. I guess.”

I can too. If I have to, I guess.

Of course, I hung the quilt up and noticed that the wonderful spiral stitching in the center is unnoticeable 3 feet away. Small flowers and thick thread to the rescue. Of course, the pond has floating flowers.

The change isn’t a technique or a new technology, really. The change is learning to listen better.

Angling for Fish: The Short and Long of It

| ellenanneeddy

Last week has been spent in fish production. I can’t really put in the octopuses until I have the fish to create the path around them.

Usually, fish have scales, and the scales divide the space..You progress from scale to scale, picking lighter colors as you get to the underbelly. You fill in the scales darker on top and progressing through lighter colors around the belly. It’s pretty. It gives depth.

What if you don’t divide the space? You can stitch row after row of color next to each other. It looks stripy. There’s a place for that, but it’s not very natural.

It doesn’t work for clown fish.They blend from one color through another without separation.

So how do you fill in a larger space? One way is the short and long stitch.

You need to understand that none of this is a stitch on your machine. It’s all zigzag stitching. The change is the angle in which your fabric goes through the machine.

The long and short stitch is done from side to side. The difference that it spreads from both sides and fills in unevenly, shading the area softly and without stripes. The top and bottom of the image has a solid line to outline.

That kind of shading allows us to put in darker contrast colors to shade that blend right in. These fish are shaded with a dark and then a lighter purple. Since the colors are mostly covered with orange thread, your eye blends them into a shaded solid orange.

All of this is for the octopus’s garden. This is my second pin-up. I think it needs one pillar rock and some water, but it’s ready to back, and stitch.

For more information about the long short stitch, check out The Long and Short of It Blending Stitches with the Long Stitch

Woman Proposes, Art Laughs

| ellenanneeddy

A while back I decided to see if I could recreate the energy from a piece I was particularly pleased with. If you’ve been following the blog, I’ve documented it as I’ve worked.

I wouldn’t call it a success. I went through three separate fish, not happy with any of them. I embroidered the best of them and still felt bland.

So I passed on the bass and did a catfish, which I’m not displeased with. The bass went back into the pile.

I can plan all I want. There’s a serendipity to art that is inescapable. While I was scraping out the studio, I found a piece of fabric I’d totally forgotten about.

All of a sudden, my wallflower fish had gone dramatic. I built him a whirlpool/vortex.

My fish fooled me again. I spent some time embroidering some nice metallic minnows that shyly blended right into the background.

They are pretty, but they have no punch.

So I’m trying these brighter gold minnows. I’m still not sure. They’re embroidered from poly, and they might stand out too much. I may need to do some from metallic gold.

I’m in charge. Right.

Clean Up in the Fish Isle

| ellenanneeddy

The octopuses’ garden series is working up. I finished up with the MAP kids, got enough rest to face the studio, and discovered that we had to find it to face it. Prep for a class leaves endless clutter and many nice neat piles sprawled everywhere.

It will be a while before we find the table. Then we can search for the floor.

But in that process I’ve started the next step for the octopuses.

Why do I need all those fish? The octopuses are all well and good, but they’re not going to be dynamic without something building a path. So we are making fish. The fish are what will make the octopus quilts move.

I mean a lot of fish. Ive got somewhat close to 50 fish drawn for four quilts. Will I use them all? Maybe.

This is about fabric scarcity. A year ago, we could get almost any fabric. This December, I had to beg a dye house for my order of pdf cotton. They had 50 yards in-house that they were portioning out to their clients.

I hate that. I hate depression economics and carefully crafted source shutdowns. I hate the idea of saving rubber bands and string. We’re there. All of a sudden, hand-dye is precious, and I need to be careful to use up the little bits.

Today I went through felt, hand-dye, and stabilizer scraps. It was a good thing I was cleaning up and sorting. There are some scraps I keep good account of. Anything brown, gray or stony ends up as rocks in another quilt.

But here I was scrounging for backgrounds for fish. Normally, I dye fabric especially for the larger embroideries. This last year, normal has fled out the windows.

I’m not going to talk about why. It’s incomprehensible anyway. Why was Joann’s so reckless as to go defunct? I suspect greed and stupidity dancing arm in arm off to court. Joanns is gone. Our place to run out for everything sewing is gone.

Walmart used to have a decent fabric section. Now it has an isle of highly unappealing cuts made from mostly poly blends. I’m deeply underwhelmed. I suppose you could use it for Halloween costumes.

Thank God there are quilt shops. But so much is catch as catch can on the internet. Do you need needles? Sheers? Felt? Not always at the quilt shop.

So all of a sudden, all of my hand-dye is limited. And precious. And I’m digging scraps out of piles to embroider on.

If I sound like I’m whining, I am. I hate scrapping for fabric. I’ve spent the day digging through fabric scraps, trying to make it work out. I’m not open to discussion about this. This is just how I feel.

The real question is, do I really want to do my art? No matter what?

I don’t understand making an arranged shortage of anything. I don’t get it. It’s stupid with a funny hat on it.

But I’m dammed if I won’t do what I can with what I have.

So, how do we find the fabric that is out there? I’m not sure.

This is a brave new world I don’t like very much. Women don’t count. Art doesn’t count. Sewing doesn’t count to the point where it’s not even treated as an industry anymore. Everything plastic glitters golden.

When the quilt world started, men really didn’t notice. It was something women did for each other. Men considered it pin money. Quilt shops flourished from the early 70s to the 80s before men inserted themselves into the industry in a “professional” way. Things changed. Fabric was a big business. They waded in and took over. Now they drop it like a stone.

So if it’s not an industry anymore, what do we do now? We need to figure it out. And since the male fabric industry has no interest in our needs, we need to figure it out together. We’ve always known how to find fabric for each other.

We need to support any fabric store we can. If we need them to be here for us, we have to be here for them now.

We need to find new ways to find fabric.

And I’m finding scraps to embroider fish on, because it’s what my pieces need.

Another Amazing Day at the Peoria Art Guild with the MAP Kids

| ellenanneeddy

‘

Last week I did my first class with the MAP kids at the Peoria Art Guild. Yesterday we did the follow-up class.

These are amazing kids. Already serious and accomplished artists at 17, they can do anything.

We did collage with all kinds of fabrics. We had three more kids arrive yesterday. They jumped right in.

The MAP program is a mentoring project for hight school students. They’re exposed to all kinds of art and processes. There will be a show of their work early summer. It should be eye-opening.

Here’s some of their wonderful works.

Working with them was a privilege. Can’t wait until summer to see their show!

One More Time: We Need Another Fish

| ellenanneeddy
Fall Waters the original quilt

Late last year I did a fish quilt that I thought was really successful. As an experiment, I took some of the same elements to see if I could make something that matched it in energy and beauty. Not copying. Just trying for the same feel. It failed. It laughed in my face.

This is not a new thing. I have piles like an archaeologist’s dig of pieces that didn’t work, tucked into the corner or another. And I raid those piles regularly, looking for the next thing.

Here is my failed experiment. I found it tucked in one of those piles. Could it work a different way?

first fish for fish rising

I blame the fish. He’s a nice fish. A little clueless. But not compelling.

New catfish

So we/re trying again. Same background. New fish. Something with more drama going on.

At that point, I abandoned the idea of using the same components. This quilt needs its its own water and world. I put in sun motes across the surface. I decided against small embroidered fish because I already had some wonderful ones rubbed into the fabric in gold.

Fish Rising, with a different fish

Once I added the new fish, I felt more assured. Full disclosure, I cut off the white tail ends since they made it look like Pac-Man. Much improved.

We’re not done yet. Lots of layers of stitching and sheers left to go. But it doesn’t feel like a loser anymore. My experiment was very useful. You really can’t step into the same piece of art twice.