Art Process

Less Is Less: Color Choices for Smaller Images

| ellenanneeddy
machine embroidered. not outlined yet.

I’ve whined a bit about larger work this month, mostly because I had 6 full sized pieces to finish. Not fun. But all but one is done.

So in response to that, and in giving myself a break, I decided to do something smaller. These Japanese cranes have been on my mind for a wile. Originally they were on a textile.

People talk about making a smaller version of something and then blowing it up. I’ve never found that works. The size changes what you can do with your stitchery.

When I work large, my thread color choices have to fill in a space. It’s a larger space. I do have a formula for that. And a basic color strategy.

  • I work dark to light.
  • The color of my background is the light within the piece. So that color has to be part of the choices.
  • Everything is accentuated. I choose my colors to be more intense than the overall effect I want
  • Your eye will mix the colors. Even if they don’t seem to go together. Don’t be afraid.

I choose

  • A dark tone of my desired color.
  • A shader, usually either purple, brown, dark green or blue.Often I’ll use a complement from my desired color
  • Several shades of th chosen color.. They can differ in tone and clarity, but they need to be lined up dark to light.
  • A shocker. Usually the complement in a bright form
  • A light color that is the color of the piece.
  • The lightest color. Usually lighter than you want the piece to be as a highlight.

That fills in a lot of space.. It needs to. It allows for some intense coloration.

Smaller work is smaller space. No help for it. The stitching isn’t as intense and you end up with a much small space to fill in. So your choices pull in.

For your thread choices you’ll want.

  • The darkest tone of your color
  • A toner, complement, brown, blue, or purple
  • A mid color
  • Maybe a shocker
  • A light color
  • May be a highlight color

It’s the same theory, but it’s stepped down for smaller spaces. I don’t like to work that way because it makes wild choices feel more intense. It abstracts very quickly

So I worked on these cranes this week. They’re white, but I worked up to that with a lot of soft toned pastels and greys. I was completely worn out on them until I slipped in a bit of turquoise.

I’m not wildly unhappy with this, but I feel limited by it

.The joke is that the ended up fitting into a yard of hand dye, the size I most often use for large quilts.

I don’t often do this, but I have a pervasive urge to redraw the image bigger, and go wild with the colors, just to see what I get.

It’s always good to change things in your work. Any change is a challenge. Chainge the size, change your pallet, change your subject, and certainly at the right moment, change your undies. Change is good.

Tackling the Task: Where Are My Big Girl Panties?

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve been prepping for a show proposal for weeks now. While I was working through my machine woes, I couldn’t back and bind the larger quilts. Now that I have a functional 930, I could accomplish that.

Two years ago, I started this heron piece. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s a heron drawing I found in my files. It was lovely. So I embroidered it and fit it into a quilt.

But it’s large. The word large is inadequate. It’s roughly 59″ x 59″ It’s larger than I’m tall.

Embroidering it wasn’t’ the problem. But after you add a back and a layer of felt, you have a lump. A very large lump.

So it sat the corner. And I became afraid of it. I made a myth of it. It was too large. It wouldn’t fit through the machine. My arms aren’t as strong as they used to be.

I had a friend ask if I could make it work if I cut it up in some way. That shook me loose. It wasn’t a bad quilt, or even a failed quilt. It was just too big. And I was being a coward.

After that I went hunting my big girl panties.

All of those things are true. It’s too large, it did not fit prettily into the machine. I had to jam it under the machine head. And my arms may be less strong, but my will..? Never doubt my will. No one can tell me no but me.

There’s no can’t like won’t, Sometimes we build myths about our work. “It’s so good.” “It’s no good.” “It will never lie flat” Almost all of that is irrelevant. I won’t know i it’s good for some while after I finish it. I need to stop the negativity and just step into the task. It was backed, quilted and bound in 3 days.

Here’s the details on Great Blue

Here are the other quilts I’ve set up for my proposal. I think the heron’s really necessary. Big girl panties and all. Wish me luck.

Willow March
Egret
Blue Fish
Octopi Reel
Bsvkyard Conversation
Waterfall
Blue Pond
Snake in the Grass
In the Shell
Big Fish
Waterfall

Done: When the Quilt is Finished

| ellenanneeddy

I finished three quilts this week. That felt great but I always have a kind of wobbly moment when a project is done. With the machine troubles, I wasn’t able to back or bind things easily, so it waited. I had 6 quilts backed up, ready to bind. I have three done, three left to bind.

After you finish, you look around the studio and try to figure out what’s next. In this case, a whole lot more binding. It’s not encouraging.

In Myers-Briggs speech, I’m an INFP. The P stands for perceptive. The N for intuitive. What that means is that I don’t like finishing.

When I start a piece of art, it’s truly a part of me. It comes out and is connected to each day in the studio.

But as it grows, it develops a life of it’s own. There are things that quilt will demand. Some of which aren’t what you normally do. So you separate slowly, as the work finishes.

When it’s finished, it’s itself. It has it’s own destiny. It will do what it’s supposed to do. And I desperately need another piece to fill the void.

I suppose it’s separation anxiety.

I’m very anxious when I finish work. I don’t know what to do with myself until I start something new. The process itself is how I live and breathe. One quilt flows into another. One piece suggests something else that has to be tried.

Lucky me, I have three more quilts to back and bind. It’s not my favorite part. By the time I’ve finished that, I’m done. And part of me longs to be off with another piece, figuring out its background and thread colors.

But there is something wonderful that happens when a top becomes a quilt.

It feels finished. It feels complete. It’s ready to be shown and shared. It’s a finished chapter.

It leaves a hole.

I’ve been riding a I need to take my new work, this new wind and use it to safe a place for my work. Besides, it makes me crazy not to show it off. It has a life of it’s own. That life shouldn’t be just the closet.

So I’ll grind through bindings, and flip through books until the next thing grabs me by the neck and must be made.

The embroidery makes me happiest. After all, it’s color therapy in thread.

I’ve randomly added pics of the finished quilts. They are up and for sale on Etsy

This article has good information about the Myers-Briggs personality types. It’s a helpful way at looking at how others view their worlds.

Marching On: Struggling Along to New Tech

| ellenanneeddy
Detail of fish in water elements

I have to say that this week has left me exhausted. My new to me 930 froze mid stitch, and I am, again. scrambling. Currently working are the 220 and the 20 U Singer.

If it sounds like a first world problem, you’re probably right. But I sew every day, usually around 3-4 hours a day. It’s more than a job. It’s not quite an adventure. It’s certainly my mental health.

When I was teaching, occasionally I’d get a student who would ask me how to do something. Usually it was an amazing idea. But I’d never tried it. I was sorry to tell them I didn’t know exactly how to do that, but that they eventually would. Art is not all about inspiration, and public statements. It’s often fed by the ability to hunt the snark, find a way to make things as you wish. It’s damn hard work.

But if it’s important enough, you find a way. And many artists have the decency to make their journey available to others, so that our art grows, not just in volume or in content but in ability. It’s why we write. It’s why we teach.

If I said that to you in class at one point, I apologize profusely. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s what you wanted to hear. And I thank you for not having hit me.

The art quilt movement rebuilt quilting. Part of it hunted down old skills: hand stitching, hand quilting, pattern pieces, paper piecing and the like. Part of it is new tech: rotary cutters, machine work, computer design, different materials and stabilizers, different threads.

This is not the glamourous part of art. It’s grueling. Try one thing, try another. Look for an answer. Take the best compromise you’ve got.

Edging with three hoops on the 20U

I’m currently working on a koi fish quilt, working title, Upstream. It includes a kick ass koi and waterfalls over cliffs. I’m proud to say I figured out how to do the detail stitching on the 20 U. It involved 3 metal stackable hoops. I’m waiting with some anticipation for my Maggie Frame to arrive. It may really change the whole hooping process

The hoops are important because I can’t get a foot to work on the 20 U. The one foot that works won’t deal with the thickness of the quilt sandwich. Other feet I tried didn’t work with the machine or allow for a zigzag stitch.

For those not familiar with how sewing machines work, your machine will not form stitches if your fabric isn’t held taunt. Your pressure foot usually provides that stability. Without it, something else has to hold your fabric tight. Hense, the hoop. This video does a nice job of explaining how a stitch forms.

So I have to figure out the hoop thing.

On another front, my new crashed Bernina 930 is in pieces soaking in machine oil. I’m sure we’ll figure it out.

Stitched down with water elementals

I’m struggling with finding ways to utilize the Singer 20U. I added in my cliffs, direct applique with the 20U, using that stack of hoops. It’s a less elegant stitch line, but it worked.

Next steps: stipple in, add water splashes, back, quilt and bind.

Work Flow: What Do I Do First?

| ellenanneeddy

My work contains a lot of different processes. It can seem a bit overwhelming when you’re looking at the inished piece. But there is a flow to it.How do I start? What makes sense out of what comes first? And next. And why?

I’m using the cat head fountain as my example here because it’s what I’m currently working on. This is a repeat of a quilt that never worked out.( see Try, Try, Again). Every piece has its own challenges and processes, some of which are unique to that piece. This one isn’t reallly typical. I’ve been trying to fix my problem with man made structures for some while. The fountain itself was a separate process I’ll skip over for right now.

I’d like to say none of this is written in stone. This is generally how I approach a piece of art.

Which comes first, the background or the subject?

It can go either way. It’s a chicken and egg problem. I need both. It doesn’t matter which comes first.

Background

The background answers many question. Sometimes there’s a piece of hand dye has really strong opinions and tells you exactly what to put on your quilt. It’s worth listening. So I put the background up on the wall and let it tell me the story. Is it a swamp? A meadow? A river? The background often tells me exactly where I am. What time it is? This background was a piece of oil paint stick rubbing on gray hand dyed that made perfect old stone.

Sometimes there’s a piece that’s perfect but it’s just too small. I may strip piece it to stretch it. I did piece a border to this, to get it to the right side.

Subject

The background does all of that xcept when it doesn’t. Then I go looking for images. I do use books for reference. I’m a poor enough artist that once I’ve drawn it, it’s pretty much unrecognizable. But I do like to get the numbers correct on how many toes my creature should have.

I draw on Totally Stable, an inron on, removable stabilizer. The stabilizer stays witin the piece. It’s drawn backwards because I’m stitching from the back.

Either road, I never prep the back until I’ve embroidered the subject. The embroideries shrink. And not in an even way. The shrinkage comes from the width of the zigzag stitch you’re using. Usually it’s around 11 percent, it’s not consistant, or predicable.

Stabilize the Background

Once the subject is embroidered, I stablize the back with felt and Decor Bond.

Elementals

Elementals are things that are see through fire, water, air,clouds, flower petals. If it’s a flat applique, I back it wit Steam a Seam 2, iron it down, and stitch it in a loose zigzag with monofilament clear thread.

First Pin Up

Once I have the elements in place, I pin up my subject into the background and assess what I need to make a pathway

Components

These can be any smaller images that direct the eye through the piece: bugs, fish, birds, or stones. In this case it’s leaves, roses and small yellow birds

Second Pin Up

I add in the components to create a visual path. This it that last moment to adjust for everything The smallest angle of a leaf or bird can change it dramatically.(see Turn of the Head) After it’s stitched down, I’m committed. This is where I currently am with this quilt. The next part is to leave it on the wall for several days to be sure everything is where it should be.

Stitch Down

At this point I stitch the elements into the background

Stipple

Most pieces do not lie flat unless they’re stitched all over. Some kind of stipple will accomplish that.

Back, Quilt, and Bind

Finally I back the piece, quilt it, and cord bind it. Check out Way over the Edge for instructions on cord binding.

This is not always the path. But these are all things that need to be accomplished.

I regularly walk you through my projects step by step. But I don’t often show it in a more macro form. For more information on work flow check Deciding Rather than Designing.

Try, Try Again:

| ellenanneeddy

This is about keeping old work. It’s also about process shots. And it’s about putting things down and picking them back up when the time is right.

There are pieces that never work out. I don’t have a bunch of hopeless little piles in the studio, but there are some. This is one that is old enough that I don’t even have process shots of the disaster.It could vote. If I had process shots, Id know better what I did.

There are 200 fountains in Kansas City in around a four block area. I got to walk there one afternoon. I’m always a water baby. I was mesmerized. I saw a fountain with a cat head that blew my mind. Not the largest fountain. But all I could think of was birds flying through it. Owls. Spoonbills. Swallows. Chickens. Fantasy birds flying over an old stone fountain.

I had to try it.

It bombed. I couldn’t make the fountain. I’m not good at man made structures. I just didn’t have the chops. And I had no Idea how to make flowing water. It took me almost nine months to figure out that I couldn’t figure it out.

That kind of exercize is bad for moral. I never throw things out, but I must have thrown this out. I can’t even find the cat head I embroidered for it. Had I kept process shots and left the pieces alone, I could show you. As it is, you’ll have to imagine. It was hopelessly rumpled and the fountain looked like it was made by 2 3 year olds ready for naptime.

Fast forward 15 years. I rubbed a series of grey texturized fabric for some abandoned city pieces. I wanted birds flying over it. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? J’d come back to my cat head fountain.

There is an instinct to run. To say it’s too hard. To just back away.

But I’ve decided not to.

What has changed?

  • I do my embroideries separately now so I get much less distortion
  • I can do the fountain as a separate applique and applique it as well
  • I’m much more secure with falling water. I’ve done it now and feel confident I can do it again.
  • I now use oil paint stick rubbing to create old carved stones.
  • I’m working with a better stabilizer (Decor Bond, Stitch and Tear, and Felt)

Strangely enough, I was able to find a picture of the fountain online. Not available five years ago. Somethings just get better.

Will that matter?

It might, It’s worth a try. When an old idea still has that kind of heat behind it, it’s important. It needs to be worked with. We begin to transform ourselves when we interact with images that somehow connect strongly. Most strongly, when those images scare or upset us, but also the ones that delight us. Creating an image gives us some power over what we create. It changes our story. It changes us. All those cave men drawing Bisons can’t be that wrong.

Currently I’m working on embroidering the three swallows, visiting the fountain. While the fountain is a mundane ordinary thing, the birds are anything but. I did them in rainbow colors, because they are the fantasy past all that mundane cold stone. They are delight on a gray cold day.

I originally wanted one with owls and one with roseated spoonbills. I still might.

I’m going to continue this in several posts, because it’s clearly a journey for me, and I’d like to share it with you. Let me know what you think.

Too Large: Managing Big Quilts

| ellenanneeddy

I love big quilts. I know my definition of big is not large for those doing bed quilts. I consider a 45″ x 36″ piece large. This is a big larger than that, probably around 45″ square.

I also am terrified of them. A large quilt is a commitment. It’s at least 2 weeks- 2 months of time and energy. If it works, that’s fine. If it isn’t, that time, energy and material is lost. It’s not exactly wasted. It’s education, and education has its costs. But it is demoralizing.

There are also a lot of components in this piece: the spoonbill, fish, birds, wisteria, and iris fronds. They can all look great if they’re place precisely. Placing them precisely is not simple. You have to look at it up on a wall.The view on a quilt on a flat surface is distorted. You can’t see the design well enough.

So a larger piece is a bit scary. They’re harder to design, because it’s harder to see what you’re doing. So I took my time on this piece. The bird is great. Getting her into her pond is a bit harder.

I’ve pinned this piece up 3 times. Partially because needed to use the wall for something else. Partially because I wasn’t sure. In the end I ended up tilting the legs and the iris leaves to emphasize the visual path on this.

This is where a black and white picture comes in. Seeing things in black and white makes a lot of things more clear. I get distracted in the color, and the black and white shows what really is and isn’t popping.

Hopefully she’s in her proper place. She’s mostly stitched down, so it’s what it is.

Sheen!

| ellenanneeddy

We talk alot about contrast. Contrast creates all the excitiment in our work. We think about contrast in color, in dark and light, and in shapes. All of those play a big part in how we view a piece of art.

But there is a more subtle form of contrast: sheen. The first thing your eye sees is not the color or the form. It sees how shiny things are. The sheen separates everything from anything that isn’t shiny. It helps the eye comprehend what it’s seeing, what is important.

The easiest way to think about this might be the hardware paint department. You can get paint that is matt, paint that is eggshell, and paint that is high gloss.

Unlike the paint, there are a lot more subtle differences. Thread and fabric have large variations in shine.

In this piece I used several shades of iridescent organza. This is pure fairy dust. Cut in short lengths it makes Angelina Fiber.

Angelina fiber is more blingy. The organza is one step down on the blingometer. It’s a bit hard to work with in terms of color. It acts like any other organza for applique. I fuse it on with Steam A Seam 2, and stitch it with a soft monofilament edge.

The trick is that it picks up the colors around it. It’s not at all the color you see on your cutting table. And it shines like a neon star. These are the atmospheric appliques that form the water reflection. The moon is white. The ripples are a light blue. And the dark is a deep cobalt. It’s not what you’d expect. But I love it.

You do need to tone it down a bit so that isn’t the only thing people see. How to do that? If you can’t beat them, join them.

The fish applique are metallic thread and have a different sheen. But for the background, i covered it with Sliver stippling. Sliver is lurex as a thread. It looks like Christmas tinsel. It acts like an anaconda in heat. But if you put it in the bobbin and stitch from the back it is easy to work with

The result is that it’s all so shiny it fits in. Which is where I added leaves that are matt, just for contrast.

How do I know if I did it right? I take a black and white photo. If it’s all visible and it balances, I’m there. I almost always take a black and white photo of a piec when I pin everything up, because that’s when I can make my corrections most easily.

You can see the bubbles gleaming out, but the stipple with Sliver makes it a more even treatment, and the fish show up better.

For more information on working with Sliver, you might want to look at Skimming the Surface: Bobbin Work with Silver.

I See Spots: Knots and Dots

| ellenanneeddy

In a world where sewing machines have automatic cutters, do we need to tie off thread ends?

It’s certainly a time saver to have an automatic cutter. But how good are they? And what do your ends look like once they’re cut?

My 770 Bernina has a thread cutter. I love it when it works. That is part of the issue. But it’s instant, and happens at the push of a button. It does speed things up.

But there are other things lost.

Using an automatic cutter, it works equally well either working from the top or the back.

You can really only tie threads working from the back, unless you’re willing to pull all the threads to the back to tie them. Why go to the bother?

It depends on how you feel about poking up threads, and what kind of threads you are using.

Thread types

I use three kinds of thread for building most images: polyester 40 weight, wound metallic, and flected metallic. I could use rayon, but it breaks more than I want to put up with. I could use cotton, if I could tollerate the fact that it isn’t shiny. So those are my go-tos

Polyester thread is strong. Because it’s all of one piece, it doesn’t fray very much. It’s a softer than metallic.You can clip it right to the edge. You’ll have some poke up but it isn’t wirey.

All metallic thread is different. Since they’re wound of several components, even the best of them are relatively fragile threads, And it frays. The wound metallic is worse than the flecked thread. IF you clip them close. they pop up like the little wires they are, and leave obnoxious poke up endings.

Just because metallics are fragile, I tend to use metallics only from the back side. Thread breaks more through the needle than through the bobbin. But, as a side effect, you can pull the threads to the back and tie them.

It that tiresome? Oh, yes. It slow down your stitchery considerably.

That being said, nothing else looks like metallic thread. It’s a texture that is crisp and shiny. Did I mention that I like shiny?

Is it worth it? It all depends on how you feel about fuzzy threads poking up from the top.

Pulling threads

For this fish, with all his spots, I felt it was essential. I wanted a smoothly scaled surface with separated spots. You can sew all the spots at once and have stitching connecting them through the piece. It works if you intend to stitch heavly over the connections. It tends to be a bit thicker than I like. So each spot was stitched separately and tied off, start and finish. If I just clipped thread, the fish would look furry before I finished.

Could I have stitched in one place and anchored my thread that way? I’m never sure about that. Sometimes I’ve seen it hold, sometimes not. Tieing is sure.

How to pull up thread

  • Come to the end of your stitching line.
  • Pull the piece 4-5 inches away from the needle, with both top and back thread attached.
  • Place the piece under the machine needle exactly where you stopped.
  • Move the wheel through one stitch. when the needle comes up, take the top thread from both where the stitching stops and from where you put in the last stitch.
  • Pull the thread from both places, and your thread will pop to the top of your piece.
  • Cut the ends long enough to make a knot.
  • Tie top and back threads together
  • Clip after the knot

So here is my beautiful fish, ready to jump in the pool. He’s all tied together, and he’s sleek in his metallic finish. And nothing is poking up, laughing at him.

Is it fussy? Well yes. But if it gets the look you want, isn’t that the point?