birds

Shimmer: Making a Minnow Shine

| ellenanneeddy

I love minnows! My dad used to bring me home minnows when he’d been fishing, so I could watch them. They aren’t exactly like fish visually. They have parts that are solid, but they also have fins and underbits that are really translucent. How do you do that in thread?

I used to not pay much attention to the kinds of metallic threads I used. I mixed them all together by color and that was that. But lately, I’ve been paying more attention. Metallic thread is not only shiny. It comes in different kinds of transparency.

Why would that matter? A more transparent crystal thread gives a translucency to your embroidery. It’s not quite see-through. Most wound metallic threads are not at all see-through. But the flecked metallic threads can be to some extent.

Most metallic threads are not. They are a strictly shiny surface that reflects, in both ways, the solidity of metal.

Metalic-colored threads have the shine, but they are not see-through either.

Crystal metallics are different. They have a translucency that translates into your stitching as being see-through.

With some careful planning, the bodies of the minnows are mostly solid, but the mixture of metallic silver and iridescent white crystal makes for transparent-looking fins.

It’s a trick, but it’s a cool trick.

These minnows will be in Shadow on the Shore. I’m not sure how many minnows we’ll use, but there’s always room for leftovers.

For more thoughts about translucent thread and embroidery see Translucent: Making Stitching Look Transparent.

Quilt Bits that Time Forgot:

| ellenanneeddy
Swish!
Swish! detail

There’s a constant pathway in my studio. It’s not the one through the piles of fabric, although that would be useful. Often one quilt sparks another quilt, either in concept or in terms of left overs.

The fish in Swish and Koi were once supposed to be in one quilt. It just didn’t work out that way. I guess if you’re a red fish you need a space of your own.

You know I always make extras of everything. Right now I’m working on some green and silver minnows. I can’t go wrong here. They’re right for the heron I’m working on, but those I don’t use are bound to fit in a quilt somewhere.

Rose Moon
Rose Moon detail
Owl Stream
Owl Stream
Hunters Moon
Hunters Moon

These 3 owls all look similar in style. That’s because they were all made for one quilt. That quilt simply didn’t work. I have those moments, like everyone else. It sat in a pile for around 8 years/and I decided to use one of the owls. Then another. Then another. I consider any quilt that sits in a pile for 8 years unfinished to be probably not working. Unless I have a miracle revelation when I find it in the pile.

This is how my studio works. I produce work in many stages. Sometimes those stages work immediately as I envision them. Sometimes they don’t. But there is surprisingly little waste. Almost everything gets used somewhere. It’s a process of finding the right place to put it.

There’s another side to this. I get to take an image and put it into a different place. Which is exciting because a different piece of fabric puts it into a different world. That’s a wonderful experiment. Will the light change it? Will the stippling change the light. So many questions to ask in sequence. And to answer.

The price tag for this is the ability to change your mind. Understand this is a process you are not in control of. And enjoy the ride as your pieces develope under your hands.

Fussy Stitching: Where Precision Counts

| ellenanneeddy

Normally, when I do a large embroidery, I’m working from the back. This works because I’ve got my pattern drawing on the back and it gives me all the information I need to fill it in. That assumes I can see my stitching.

Well, I do things the way I do unless I don’t. After a week of working on these guinea hens, I turned them right side up last night and stitched from the top.

Why? The stripes on these things are making me crazy. It’s sort of like matching plaid pant seams. Do you remember that hopeless enterprise? These birds depend on precise white stripes. The white doesn’t show up against the stabilizer, so you can’t see if it’s dense enough or smooth enough. What I thought was a bold smooth line looked raggy. These birds are fussy.

But I think they’re worth it. I also wanted you to see that you can overstitch. And sometimes that’s the answer.

I overstitch for a number of reasons: to outline a piece, to clarify the edge line, to add extra texture, or to put in highlight. I can put down a wonderful range of colors. But sometimes thot range needs the context of texture as well.

I wanted the dots separated so they went on first. The stripes went on, but I had no idea how raggy they looked from the front. So now, I’m going back to redefine them so they’re smooth and dense enough to please me.

The point of this is it’s not over until the fat lady sings. Until you say it is. So don’t be afraid to restitch, redirect and redesign something that isn’t quite right

Color Study: Why Red?

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve just finished Little Blues! I’m delighted with this quilt. It took me a while to get it finished off. In that process, on a whim I added some red silk flowers to the background.

Why red? Why not orange or blue or white? I did try those. But red was it.

I really think it’s worth the while to put up your color decisions on a color wheel. Just how you can see how they relate.

The color wheel gets a bad rap. It’s old fashioned, it’s boring, we all know how colors are made, it’s incomprehensible…. It’s still the best way I know to show the relationships between colors. It shows how colors are created. But most importantly, it shows how they react to each other.

The farther colors are apart from each other, the more tension there is between them. And like every good soap opera, more tension means more excitement.

At which point, you need to ask, where is this quilt going? If it’s in a baby’s bedroom, you might want to keep the tension and excitement to a minimum. But for a gallery? Bring on the excitement!

I was surprised when I put the colors up on the wheel. I didn’t realize how far around the wheel I had gone. But as you can see, the red zings across from the green. I don’t have much in there, but it wakes up a piece that has that sleepy analogous color thing going on without it. Not much. Just a handful of red silk flowers.

I consider using the whole color wheel a visual trick of sorts. It wins awards, and it’s showy, but color needs to be the focus of a piece for that to work well. But this almost full-color wheel is rich, satisfying, and just red enough to get attention.

For more information about color theory check out Color Theory: The Tug Across the Wheel and Thermal Shock: Shocking Color Choices.

What Happens to the Frog?

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve been working on this pair of herons for a while. The working title is Little Blues. When I put it up on Facebook someone asked me, what happens to the frog?

Usually, I talk with you about how I do things. But that’s a why question. Why did I put a frog in that kind of peril?

Why questions are troublesome. Sometimes we’re happier not knowing. Sometimes it just needs to be asked.

And it would be easier to answer if I actually did know why. Sometimes I just don’t. I’m compelled to work with certain images. I’ve learned to follow that down because my nature quilts aren’t strictly just nature quilts. Most of the time it’s people I know in situations. Before they actually happen. Most often, it’s me in some regard. The tricky part is that the part of me that makes art knows things long before the rest of me does.

But in answer to the question: the frog lives! He may be in a perilous state, but he thrives in spite of it. You may notice the butterfly over his head that he has not yet seen. His hunch is here too.

I think most of us live almost unconsciously in a state of peril. It’s a dangerous world out there. But we find our safety and thrive despite it. Art is a part of that. How we build our own stories changes our place in those stories. We make your safe space: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It may be right next door to uncertainty, but we build our own safety and joy within it.

Is it true? How would I know? I just get images, and they eventually tell me where they should go.

The Long and the Short of It: Blending Stitches with the Long Stitch

| ellenanneeddy

We’ve been talking about the variability of the zigzag stitch in free motion. Most of the time, I’m filling in a space where I want a line of color to show up. This is a trick that will give me a soft blend of color across the image without a hard line. I’ve heard it called the long stitch, although the old-fashioned description you hear with free motioners is the long short stitch. As with all free-motion zigzag stitching, the difference isn’t a setting on the machine. It’s how you move your fabric through the machine as you’re stitching.

Most of the time when I’m filling a space, I stitch a zigzag line at an angle around the edge, I shade the piece by stitching from side to side, and then I smooth the edges with a zigzag that moves straight through.

But when you just move from side to side you get a long blending stitch that flows into itself. The breast of the bird is done from side to side. The feathers are done with an outline, shading, and smoothing. You can see the difference.

You can find more information about the angle of stitching in the Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book or this post, Stitch Vocabulary: Zigzag Stitch.

what’s Underneath: How Backgrounds Shade Embroidery

| ellenanneeddy

Like most little girls, I had a pink bedroom. Unlike most other girls, mine was seafood bisque pink with brown. Needless to say, I’m hesitant about using pink. I certainly don’t wear it..

But in spite of my feelings about pink, I know better than to dismiss a color from the color wheel. They’re all in relationship with each other. It’s like putting up with weird Uncle Fred because you really like his wife Ethel. They are deeply connected and you get the one when you choose the other.

And some things are just unabashedly pink. Like roseated spoonbills. So here we are.

She’s a nesting bird, and I loved her pink and brownish background. You can push past your color preferences when you try,

These flowers were mostly white sheers and lace, stitched over in pinks, cream, and whites. The white glowa behind and the thread gives a pink blush. To my mind, they register as white flowers but the shadows echo the burgundy background. It’s a delicate look.

I haven’t done lady slippers for a while. And I wanted a white creeping vine around the outside. But you can’t make something just white. It has no dimension. So this time I used white sheers to form the flowers, but I pulled in other colors to shade them. Because the background is fuchsia, I went for soft pink shading for the white flowers. For the lady slippers, I went into brighter pinks and burgundies, with the white shining through just a bit.

Now, what makes the color of a flower? Or any other thread work? Is it the thread? Or are there other factors.

No matter how much you stitch over something you always see the background. Always. Usually I am for a background color that accentuates the threadwork.

What happens if it doesn’t blend or match? It glows from beneath. I’ve started with iridescent white organza to create an inner glow for the lady slippers.

I stitched from both sides, leaving just a bit of plain iridescent organza in the center to round out the flower. The iridescent background creates an inner glow and a subtle pink.

Here I chose pink sheers and stitched over them with various pink/apricot threads. The effect is vibrant and full of color.

The background I stitch over is as much a part of the color as the threadwork. The differences are subtle but very cool. The combination of light and color creates dimensional blooms that glow.

Living Large: Strategies for Dealing with Large Quilts

| ellenanneeddy

I almost never do bed quilts. I did them when I was younger and watched them die as I used them. It was too depressing. I occasionally will do a baby quilt or a comfort quilt for someone dealing with illness. Mostly I do art.

And since art doesn’t have to be big, I don’t often make something bed-size to put on the wall. Except when I do,

This heron couldn’t be done smaller. At least I couldn’t do it smaller. He’s 60″ x 52″. He’s pretty much the size of God’s underpants.

There are some strategies for dealing with overlarge quilts. The first three are, don’t. But if you’ve decided it must be large, there are several things you can do that will help.

Strategies for Large Quilts

Break it into components. For myself, that means the embroideries. I do them separately and then apply them when the top is ready. But it might be working in rows or in segments. Different quilts will suggest different approaches.

Use larger details. Scaling up the design means there’s less work in it. Sometimes extensive detail just looks ditsy on a larger piece.

Buy extra sewing machine needles. Larger quilts require more tugging and pulling and that will break needles. Promise.

If you have a machine with a wider arm, this is the moment. The arm of your machine is the space between the needle and the mechanical right end. A lot of manufacturers make machines with a longer arm. That’s extra room to shove the quilt through the machine. It can be very helpful.

Use a design wall where you can walk away and really see your design. A design wall should be big enough to accommodate your work and in a big enough space where you can walk away and really look at it. For more information about making and using a design wall, here’s a blog post on it: Studio Essentials: The Glories of the Design Wall.

The other helper is what we used to call bicycle clamps. Roll your quilt, clamp them with these clamps and then you can maneuver it easier.

I don’t do large quilts often. But they do really make a punchline in a gallery show. So this heron is promised to a show at the Peoria Art Guild in September. We should have him crowing by then.

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telling the Story: How backgrounds Change Everything

| ellenanneeddy

Today I needed a color break. I’ve been frantically finishing the Stitch Vocabulary Book for three weeks, and I was terribly tired of computer work. So I sorted out the fabric I intend to bring to sale at Gems of the Prairie in May, That meant I set aside the pieces I wanted to work up.

Of course, that was an immense pile, Somewhere in it, I found this owl.

He really wasn’t lost. I knew he was around. I just wasn’t sure what pile. He was the third of three owls I made for a quilt that simply never worked.

I found several pieces that I thought would be amazing backgrounds. But a very strange thing happened. It wasn’t just that the fabric made the owl feel different. They actually started telling really different stories about him.

So this had a golden open door he’s going through.

Investigating a flower in the garden. Perhaps with small mice or butterflies.

Flying toward a red moon. Or is it a rose?

Is that a fire or a sunset? Is he flying towards it or in flight away from it?

Or somehow a moonlit winter night. Perhaps with snow. Or a flowering tree with moths?

I’m always astonished by hand-dyed fabric. It’s so versatile and offers so much to design. But I hadn’t seen it as a backdrop to a story. And that’s exactly what it did.

Which will I choose? I’m not sure yet. Normally I’m drawn to color. But there’s something fabulous about that winter moon. And while I work on it, perhaps it will tell me its story.