series

Round and Around the Garnet Stitch: The Octopuses’ Garden So Far

| ellenanneeddy

Octopuses have put me in the land of the garnet stitch. It creates. textire and pattern, all within it’self.

Garnet stitch is one of the great non-programmed stitches. it’s simply moving your hands free motion in circles. Check out the Variable Garnet Stitch for more information about the stitch.

Garnet stitch has another very useful feature. You can always see the background behind it. Sometimes that is to be avoided. I pick my embroidery background to match the overall background carefully, so only the stitching stands out.

But sometimes I want the embroidery background to shine through.

This was one of those times. The background for this piece is darker and moodier than the other pieces in the series. I needed something to lighten it up. So I used a very odd cream and green background. I love it. I have a green and cream light octopus in a dark sea.

We are on to the pin up stage for octopus 4. That’s always the moment of truth. You know if it’s going to work at that point.

Because I’ve made small metallic fish and 2 nurse sharks, I have my components to fill the space and set a path. I’ll tweek it some, but the design is pretty much there.

There’s a lot of stitching left, and I need to do my water layer. But I’m confident I’m going to like this piece.

Just to show you where I am in the octopuses garden, here’s the pieces so far.

One more at least to go. Does it look like a show yet?

Flat: The Struggle Continues

| ellenanneeddy

I love solid zigzag embroidery. It allows me to detail, shade, and shape an image as effectively as if I were painting, with the difference that I won’t have my media spill on me.

But zigzag embroidery, by its nature, does not always lie flat, The stitches pull together and it shrinks, but not in a regular or even way. Eventually, you are looking at an embroidery that won’t flatten.

Can you avoid it? There are things you can do.

  • Use stabilizer. I use Totally Stable, Decor Bond, felt, and Stitch and Tear, sometimes within the same piece.
  • Use a smaller stitch width
  • Embroider on a separate piece of cotton and stabilizers. Then cut the piece out.

Will that fix it?

Wouldn’t that be nice? No. All you can do is reduce the ruffling. So there comes a point where you are looking at a very unflat embroidery, ready to go on a flat quilt top. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

The outline accomplishes several tasks. It covers the edge. It cleans up the line. But it also gathers in and flattens the embroidery. And outlines of stitched areas make those areas puff just a bit. A lot of things lie flat after the outlining.

Except for the things that don’t. Surgery, along the design lines, is the final answer. Can I stitch over the two embroidered bits. Yes! Will you break needles at that point? Oh, yes. I plan to break 5 needles a day, outlining. I don’t always. But I have the needles in hand in case.

Are you screaming that I cut my quilt? I did. May I explain something? I sewed it. I cut it. I sewed it again. How is that different from any other kind of quilting? Fabric only bleeds in the wash. The rules only apply if I embrace them. And I won’t do that if the rules don’t give me what I want.

Is it worth it? Flat is a quilter’s concept. A bed quilt should lie flat. So we think an art quilt should, too. I’m not sure about that, but they do judge your work by it and it does look bad on the wall

I may have to cut in the surface to finally flatten this piece. We do what we got do.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Again? Really? Yes. Really.

| ellenanneeddy

I try really hard not to rate my pieces as I make them. I find that my opinions of things change over time, largely in reaction to people’s reactions. If I suspend my judgment of work, I find I learn more from it. Suspending judgment allows me to flesh out ideas and move on. Finish the quilt. Next quilt, please. The learning is the goal. The quilt is almost a byproduct.

But sometimes I do a piece that knocks my socks off and throws me across the room. It’s not an everyday thing. When that happens, I find myself asking some of the same questions that I ask when I do something I hate. What happened here? Why is this piece wonderful? Or awful? What?

Was it the color palette? Technique? Is it about my background? The image itself?

A fabulous piece makes you think, “Can I do this again? How did this happen?”

I love this piece so much. So I’m going to try not to reproduce it, but to focus on its successful elements.

Part of what I love here is the quiet palette. I normally go for eye-sore colors. This was restrained. Luckily, the last batch I dyed had a piece, not exactly in the same palette, but in the same tone.

The fish can be the same threads. And I think it needs to be.

I had trouble with the fish. I wanted a fresh image, not the same, but in the same colorations. So I started several fish, only to find them wrong. I love these. But in terms of direction and size, they’re just not right.

I went through my collection of drawings. My embroidery process uses a pattern drawn on Totally Stable that goes into the back of the piece as a pattern and a stabilizer. So each drawing is consumed by the embroidery itself.

Not to worry. For the last 3 years, I’ve saved a tracing of my drawings for later. It’s turned into a jumping-off point for other pieces, and I consider that collection a treasure. I found a fish that had to be at least 10 years old, which I don’t believe I ever used.

This will be reversed when I’m done. I’m half way through the embroidery.

Originally I used a tree rubbing plate both for the trees themselves and for the reflection in the pond.

And I want to explore the rubbed oil paint trees. This piece of fabric evokes a stream rather than a pond.

Now that I’ve analyzed my elements, we’ll see where it goes. It’s at that awkward spot where everything looks wrong. But that’s the exact moment to suspend judgment and push through.

It may take all those elements and work well. It may not. There’s a mystery here I don’t understand. But I think that part of it is that a piece is not the sum of its parts. Instead, perhaps it’s a whole being itself. Maybe it can’t be reworked with the same success.

Push on. Finish the quilt. Next quilt, please. The learning is the goal.

What Makes A Series?

| ellenanneeddy

Series really almost always just happen. You make one fish quilt and suddenly there are six fish quilts. Since you’re working them within a reasonable time of each other, their techniques tend blend in with each other. Instant series.

Series are about obsessions. They’re about images you just can’t let go of. For some reason or other you’re compelled to work an image over and over again, until something settles within you and says you’ve done enough.

But every so often, you choose to make a series. That can be for many reasons. If you’re not compelled by the images you are about to die of boredom But if you’re compelled, you know what you’re doing for the next three to six months. Series are exciting because they get to answer the what-if questions.

I spoke with a gallery that expressed an interest in a show. It’s a smaller gallery, and it made me think of Monet’s Orengaria

For those of you unfamiliar, here’s a short history

The Water Lilies by Claude Monet

“History of the Water Lilies cycle

Offered to the French State by the painter Claude Monet on the day that followed the Armistice of November 11, 1918 as a symbol for peace, the Water Lilies are installed according to plan at the Orangerie Museum in 1927, a few months after his death. This unique set, a true « Sixtine Chapel of Impressionism » in the words of André Masson in 1952, testifies to Monet’s later work. It was designed as a real environment and crowns the Water Lilies cycle begun nearly thirty years before. The set is one of the largest monumental achievements of early twentieth-century painting. “

What an astonishing thing, to have a circular space, filled with Monet’s waterlilies

Monet is really the poster boy for series. His waterlilies illuminated his whole life. He painted many other things, but when I think of Monet, I think of waterlilies in the pond

Not to agrandize myself, but this little gallery would offer a chance to do an in the round kind of show experience.

Lately I’ve had a fascination with octopuses. My passions in images have to do with movement. So much of my life I’ve been constrained with a body that just doesn’t move as well as it might, I’m fascinated by the movement of creatures who are not resrrained. Nothing can move like an octopus. They also change color. I don’t know if some of the pictures I’ve been looking at are ai or not. I’m playing. They can just be wild. Why not put them in a gallery in the round?

Here are my two prior octopus quilts. I think they’re a good start

So here are my drawings for the series. There might be more. I’m not sure if they are three quilts or four. I’ll know when they’re embroidered.

So we have one octopus mostly embroidered. I’ll keep you posted as I work up the others. Encircled by octopuses. Sounds pretty wild.

Thanksgiving: A Pause

| ellenanneeddy

Between the cooking of birds and a small blizzard, we’ve had a pause in the world.. Don spent yesterday napping, I believe. I don’t know because I binged watched most of the extended Hobbit with Tolkein, my cat, and started a new sweater. Not what we normally do.

This was not a year for travel. Time and space have not cooperated. But it doesn’t mean that I felt people were distant. How did I manage to make friendships that have lasted 30 years, 40 years? How did that happen?

When we all could travel easier, many of us made friendsgiving, the day after thanksgiving. Now our bodies just aren’t cooperating. But strangely I felt everyone there. Don and I are only kids. We’re both, thankfully considering our parents, orphens. But we have family, rich and strong and very much loved. Thank you all.

Speaking of parents, my father fished as a religion. It was where he found peace, rest, calm and joy. I’ve never wanted to catch a fish in my life, but he took me in his small row boat, and immersed me in that world. Part of me has never left. When I stitch fish, I’m revisiting it. I offer it to you.

I spent the week batching luna moths for my cranes. I’m not sure whether they sit on the coast or not, but they’d be in the adjascent swamp land.

I love batch embroidery. It’s coloring in the zone. I use it for most of the small to medium elements in my quilts. So much can be done with small fish, flowers, frogs, birds, lizards, and anything else you can think of. I always make too many. It’s sort of like too much bacon. How could that happen? And of course, I can always think of a use for another fish or strip of bacon. Many pieces need a left over elements, just to round it out.

Batching elements helps me build a body of things to incorporate into a quilt to make it more love, to make it move, to make it flow.

It may be too much. This is the first pin up. They always shift by the time I get the water in and make adjustments. I think it needs rocks to ground it.

But who wouldn’t follow a path of lunar moths?