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.
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.
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.
I talk alot about color theory, choosing of threads and creating color schemes. The nature of thread painting is no different than any other art. It’s a creating of colors from components. How you arrange those components changes the effect you get.
I usually line up colors light to dark and add in a shocker and a shader. That color scheme gives us a smooth layer of color that builds on itself. It’s pretty. But it hasn’t got a whole lot of depth.
Sometimes I separate the the scales into a dark and light zone. That creates a deep separation on the scales without any shading. That’s pretty too.
I wanted something different for this fish. I wanted the scales deeply separated and clear. So I underpainted my fish first in blues, purples and greens, and then over painting with yellows and oranges.
Is it extra work? Yep. Would I do it all the time? Probably not.
But one of the wonders of doing Koi is their textures. The textures of fins and scales and their sense of motion is all of that.
So I started underpainting with the complements of the piece. Since the fish is yellow orange, the underpainting should be blue. green and purple.
He’d be pretty if I just continued in that range. Instead, after establishing the darker underpainting, I painted over with yellow and orange threads.
After that, I added a light layer of turquoise metallic thread for flash and black outline for definition.
This is where I think I’m going with this. The underpainting separates and lifts each scale and the outlining nd flash stitching punches it visually.
If you are keeping score of colors on the color wheel, you’ll notice it has a full range of analogous colors from Yellow, green, purple to blue.
Is one method better. Heavens, no! It’s a matter of having choices and knowing what those choises offer you. Now I’m off to stitch rocks and hostas.
I needed some kelp for the bottom of this shore scene. I wanted something textural and yet not dense.
There aren’t a lot of great pictures of kelp. But I found these in an art nouveau book of botanicals. It twists. And it’s long and narrow with crinkled edges.
As a lucky find, there was this strange yarn at the rescue mission sale. Both of these are loopy yarns. They were in vogue several years ago for scarfs. They have loops woven in that will make great kelp. The color also fits into the scheme, blending with the heron.
It can be spread apart to look like kelp. That’s a difficulty all its own. You can spread yarn apart, but there aren’t enough fingers to hold it that way and free motion over it. You also can’t free-motion it without it being caught in the darning foot.
So I took a two-pronged approach, I knotted the yarn where I wanted it to spread,
I couched it in place with a regular presser foot, so that I could control the width of the yarn.
I covered it with a Dissolvable stabilizer. Then I stitched it all down with the darning foot where I wanted the kelp to be. I wet down the stabilizer to make it go away.
Some yarns need special care. Don’t be afraid to use several approaches to get what you want. In the end, all that matters is the result.
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.
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 MoonRose Moon detailOwl StreamOwl StreamHunters 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.
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.
I have a secret design tool. You probably have it too. In your pocket. Yes! It’s your camera phone.
We’ve most of us succumbed to using our cell phones as our cameras. It’s one less thing to stuff in my bra, since most of my clothes lack pockets.
One of the hardest things to evaluate in your art is value. Value is the darks and lights in a piece. Color is like candy. Or antidepressants. You reach for them because it feels great.
But value is so much harder. And vital. Texture and color shine out. But value separates the different components in your piece. The best way is to see it in black and white.
I haven’t mussed much with black and white photography since you had to give black and white pictures to newspapers. I’m really dated by now.
But a black and white image will show how the values are playing in your quilt. And will help show you how your design is moving. Your eye will follow a path made by the brightest object. If you make those objects into a path through the piece, you have a visual path that will showcase your work best.
And current cell phones make it simple. There’s a preset in your camera program that will give you a black-and-white photo.
Every design has a path through it. It can be clear and obvious. But what if it isn’t? And how can you tell?
The black and white photos tell us everything we need to know.
This is the beginning picture with the fish with reeds. This didn’t quite move the way I wanted it to. The reeds didn’t form a clear enough path.
Here we see the placement for the smaller fish. But you’ll also find the placement of the reeds moves things better.
Here’s the final picture with bubbles. The eye travels through the piece with grace.
I always encourage you to take pictures of your piece as you work on it. It’s great to have documentation about your work. But it’s also a great design tool.
The next time you’re unsure about the design of a piece, take out your phone, take a picture, and see it in black and white. It will tell you all you need to know.
