Art Process

All About the Line: Choosing the Right Stitch

| ellenanneeddy

For those of us who use a lot of embroidery, there are really two go-to stitches: straight stitch and zigzag. There are fancy embroidery stitches, but those two hold up the bulk of my work. The other stitches just don’t maneuver as well. You either want exactly what it can do or it won’t do what you want.

That’s ok. The variations between are vast and wonderful. The angle which your fabric goes through the machine controls how wide your stitch is and how the stitch itself is angled.

But you don’t often see people mix straight stitch and zigzag. There are reasons why, but we’re quilters, aren’t we? There isn’t any rule.

I was working on this batch of butterflies that I intend for a series I’m working on. They were meant to be black and white, although color always creeps in. The blue and purple you’re seeing at the edges is the felt I used to stabilize them. I did that on purpose, to make the lace patterns more visible.

Part of the fun was picking through my lace collection. I went through my black and whites and found some special things.

The border of this leaf lace made great wings.

But back to stitch types. This isn’t sexy but it’s the basics. Zigzag can go at a right angle through your machine and it makes a bulky solid stitch. At an angle, it makes a smooth outline. And if you run it straight either left or right, it makes a stitch that looks like a straight stitch, with some of the stitches missing. And then there’s the straight stitch.

Straight stitch won’t outline. It won’t make a bulky stitch without a lot of work. It is lyrical and can go any direction without looking scattered.

Zigzag covers edges well. It outlines well. It puckers up like it wants a kiss. And the out to the side angle fills in space very well.

How does that work out. Here’s some details and full shots to show you.

Pure zigzag

The zigzag stitching outlines really well. I’ve used it for shading inside the wings as well. It’s a feathered kind of stitch that gives a loose line.

I

I used a straight stitch to feather the wings on this bug. I love the smoothness of the stitch.

The lines on these wings were done with that zigzag out to the side. The line is a bit jagged but more pronounced.

When do you use zigzag?

When you want a strong border.

When you want to fill in a space .

When you aren’t worried about distortion.

When do you use straight stitch?

When you have an open space where the straight stitch will show next to the zigzag,

When you are worried about distortion.

When you want a clean and simple line.

Of course, you are the one who makes those decisions for your work. And everything does work. Play with it. See what you like.

Spring Dyeing!

| ellenanneeddy

Years ago, I did a very bad thing. I had dyed fabric all day and I went to the pool. You don’t get pretty dye on yourself when you dye. And it all soaks through to the skin. You mix all those colors and you get brown. Mostly down your belly and your tits.

So I was walking around with nothing but a towel over my shoulder when a very kind person looked at me and said in horror, “You don’t have to put up with that.” I looked at her and said, “Actually, I do. I’m dyeing.” I did explain to the poor soul afterwards.

I’m a fabric snob. Sorry about that. I’ve been dyeing my own fabric for my projects since I was ten. It was Rit Dye and we won’t talk about the quality of the fabric, but I understood even then that someone else’s fabric isn’t mine.

Don’t get me wrong. I love prints. I can get drunk on color and add good design to it and I’m a sloppy drunk. You can tell by the cut bits of fabric on the floor.

But I want the colors and intensity of my fabric. And I really hate fabric repeats unless they help your piece along. I’m probably going to dye as long as I quilt.

With the stimulus check (Bless those congress critters!) I’m planning a dye day. I need a new batch for me, but I’ve always got space in that batch for someone who might like to order a box of fabric to choose from, or someone who wants something special dyed just for them. A batch of light source fabric in 3/4 yards? A selection of actually not boring browns. Some deep lake or pond scum fabric. All available.

I’ve also dyed cotton/hemp/bamboo/rayon clothes for people. There are those of us who should never wear white. There is inevitably a day when it is white no more. At which point, I dye it and wear it till the threads fall apart. I can do that for you too.

If you would to either make a general fabric order, or order something special for a project, let me know. I’ll dye for you.

The Space Outside the Quilt: Thinking about Negative Space

| ellenanneeddy
Floral Arrangement 25

Most of the time we take in what’s happening inside a piece of art. That’s where our focus is. But for irregularly shaped pieces especially, the edge creates a space outside that frames the quilt much more than a border does. The outside is the negative space.

Jump at the sun

It’s not like the space did something wrong or has a bad attitude. Negative space is the area around an image. It’s not in the piece or the hanging. But it affects everything about it

All Time is Spiral In a Garden

.Why? I think largely because as we walk in and approach a hanging piece of art, the first thing we see is the shape around it. It’s the most distinct thing. You’ve seen works jammed together where you can’t keep one from the other. Ignoring negative space is like putting a gilded monstrosity picture frame around a simple piece of beauty and joy. It’s not a help.

Do I think about the negative space when I’m quilting? Not so much. I’m so involved in including the parts that are important even if they go over the edge. It’s when I’m cropping a quilt or putting it on the wall to see it properly that the negative space pops into view. And if you put pieces together, say on a wall, it’s a make or break item.

An End to Winter: Back to the Studio

| ellenanneeddy
Daylily Dance

Winter is this huge interference of snow and ice on a perfectly nice season. Mostly it’s a waiting time. I hate waiting. Not a skill I have.

I’ve spent the last two months recovering from two knee surgeries to repair a previous surgery. If it sounds like it sucked rocks, you’re right. Everyone was kind, and I purposely spared everyone details and day-to-days of my recovery. I’m mostly through it. It’s all over but the rehab and the shouting.

It’s like everyone else who goes through this. It’s a sparse time separated from your life. I crocheted edged handkerchiefs as a new thing I wanted to learn. It got as bad as that. But it fills time and doesn’t hurt, so that made it worth the candle

So when Don said I was going to the studio, I was worried. About the big step at the back door. About how long I could sit with my knee dangling. And always, did my creativity dry up during this sparse enforced winter of healing.

Silly me. Got the step in one bounce. Worked for about three hours and started a triptic I’ve been dreaming about for some while.

Here’s my bits about the new tryptic. I want to revisit Daylily Dance with more butterflies and caterpillars. Here’s the backgrounds I chose.

Background choices
Tryptic panels

Here’s some flower bits.

Is my creativity on board? I don’t think I need to worry about that. More quilts in my head than I can count.

I still have some rehab I would like to avoid but can’t. But at bottom line, I’m back where I belong.

I hope all your winters are short and productive. I hope spring finds us all whole in ourselves and with each other in kindness. I hope spring brings us the new flowers of creativity to change the world with the things we make with our hands.

Thick Thread, Thin Thread: Thread Work as Grain

| ellenanneeddy

One of the mostly lovely things about free motion is that there are no limits. Not in size, not in shape, not in color. Anything thought can be done.

One of the things that changes the look of an embroidery most is the size of the thread. Regular embroidery thread is 30-40 weight ( which means if you lay 30 threads side by side, it would make 30 inches.) It can be used either for zigzag stitching or straight.

8 weight thread needs to be stitched from the bobbin. It can only be used for straight stitch. The look is very different. But it’s also abstracted.

The size of the thread creates a grain, like a photograph. A thicker thread looks more abstract, and less detailed, but it has a strong visual impact. Here are some images in thick and thin threads for you to see the difference.

Thread choices make a huge difference in the look of embroidery. Pick your threads for your own delight.

The Miracle of Cheesecloth: Not Just for Turkey Anymore

| ellenanneeddy

I love sheers! I love the ability to have my background peak through the sheers to create the connection between background and an object.

But most sheers don’t paint or dye well. They are poly or nylon. They come in bright colors, but they have other problems. You can paint them in pastels. They don’t dye with fiber reactive dyes at all. And if you get your iron temperature wrong, they melt.

But cheesecloth does all that well! It’s all cotton, and woven loosely. And you can iron it on fry and it behaves like cotton.

You know cheesecloth. You just aren’t used to it in the sewing room. It’s an airy woven cotton people used to use to make cheese (hence the name). Or on turkies to keep the breast moist. You may have used it to make Halloween ghosts or Christmas angels.

But dyed, it can be any color in the universe. I include it in a regular dye batch and it dyes like a champ with fiber reactive dyes. And it washes out easily in your regular washer in a nylon lingerie bag.

It makes amazing leaves! The weave in the cheesecloth looks like the cells of the leaves and the stitching defines the color.

My favorite thing to do with cheesecloth is to make mushrooms. Child of the 60s that I am, they are a flora that fascinates me. And they are an excuse for eye popping color

I do make them in batches. I’ll line up a set of mushrooms on a piece of felt, using Steam a Seam 2, pull out my brightest polyester embroidery thread and stitch up batches of mushrooms at a time, that I’ll use in many different quilts. The bright colors and zigzag stitch pop the the colors to a peak intensity. Now, who doesn’t want that?

What I did differently, is I made some smaller ones for pins and patches for my friend, Sherrill Newman who owns the South Shore Market in Porter, Indiana.

I almost never make these available to people except as finished quilts. But she talked me into it. I made a small batch for her store. Some of the left overs I’ve put on sale on Etsy. They have pins backs on them, but if you wished to use them as a patch, it would be a matter of a moment to remove that with a seam ripper.

Hand dyed cheesecloth might just be the sheer you’ve been longing for. Bright, cotton, and beautifully texturized, it makes great flowers, leaves and ‘shrooms.

Body Blocked: And Now for Something Completely Different

| ellenanneeddy
With Friends in the studio

I finished four quilts this week. Partially for the joy of it, Partially to fill the time.

  • Swirling Leaves
  • Butterfly Pond
  • Ginko Butterfly
  • Heron Pond
  • Heron Pond Detail

My body is betraying me. I have an infection in my replaced knee and we’re going to have to clean it out, let it heal and replace the knee. It’s a three month process.

Can I quilt? I don’t know. The question is, can I walk into the car and the studio. We’ll find out. We don’t know.

I hate the words, ‘We don’t know.’

What I know is that time forced away from your creative flow doesn’t stop it. It finds a way. Through quilts, through words, through my hands, through my dreams, through my prayers.

We came back from the surgeon who told us that instead of doing surgery now, we need to wait until January 19th. More we don’t know. And waiting for the covid vaccine.

If you’re a praying person pray. If not spare me a good thought. I guess the first trial is the wait. Thanks!

Archival: The Drawings in the Pile

| ellenanneeddy
Fish drawing
Embroidered fish

For every embroidered creature in one of my quilts, there’s a drawing of that creature inside the quilt sandwich. I’ve always worked that way. The drawings are on Totally Stable, an iron on, tear away product by Pellon. I iron the drawing on to the back of the stabilizer and color it in with thread.

I wish I were good at drawing. I’m not. What I am is willing to do it over and over again until I have something I like. so there are piles of these drawings, some that get used and some that used to sit in a mesh laundry bin, mushed in with mountains of other drawings.

They weren’t bad drawings. Sometimes I’d pull them out and use them. They just weren’t drawings I’d used yet. But the mesh bag was a bit less than archival.

Today, Don unearthed his old file cabinet. Amazing! Flat storage!

I spent the rest of the studio day looking at old drawings that I’d saved, and gently folding them flat in preparation for being used.

It makes me wonder how much art we work on gets set aside, only to be mushed up, and forgotten. It makes me want to pay more attention to the side things that don’t quit work, just to see if they would work another time or in a different way.

Heron drawing

This heron needs some fineness. And perhaps a lot of thick thread. Now aren’t I glad I found her in the pile?

Well, I’ll Be Dyed!

| ellenanneeddy

One of the not-so-secret elements of my work has been hand dyed fabric. I’ve dyed fabric literally since I was ten. I was working with melted crayons and Rit. The result almost made my father cry when he saw the midden in the sink, but I’ve been hooked ever since.

Why? Because nothing starts better original art than original art.

With the new studio in place, I’m ready to dye. Well, almost. We still need to freshen up the wringer washer and test the new mangle. But I have a dedicated kitchen space with a drain in the floor. What more could a girl want?

I put up Three Point Landing because it’s so dependent on the fabric. It’s a one piece background with around 15 colors in it. The colors make it all glow, sky, water and waterlily. The background, just one piece of fabric, makes it all happen.

When I dye fabric for a particular piece, I usually dye three pieces for the one I’ll use. One can be backing and one can be accessory, perhaps. But all three of them will be different in lovely amazing ways. And if I’m lucky, one will be just right.

Are there commercial fabrics like this? Somewhat. Caryl Bryer Fallert does a line of fabrics that simulated hand-dye quite well. But it’s reproduced. Which means it’s not a one of a kind.

I always have some really beautiful fabric that I don’t need to keep. I sold it in classes to students, because it’s cruel to tell them they can have results like yours without giving them similar supplies.

But there are always people who come back for hand dye. It’s beautiful, The colors are vivid. it’s needle ready, starched and shrunk, and no one has a piece just like yours. Each one is unique.

My first dye run will be naturally smaller than usual. But I am taking orders for people who would like fabric. Fabric is roughly 44″ wide, mercerized cotton. It comes in yard, half yard, and yard and a half lengths. I can either send an assorted box of fabric, or hand pick for you from what you tell me you want.

The fabric has a light source in it, usually. Built in sun or moon light spots that drive the visual action of your work from the start.

Even blacks, greys and browns are vivid and exciting.

But if you ask me, I will dye what you want to your specs.

Fabric is $24 per yard. I ask that you buy at least $48 dollars worth of fabric. I do pack each box with an extra yard or two so you can pick and choose. You can send back what you don’t want. If you buy the whole box you get an extra half yard free.

I will have some extra fabric from the run, but I recommend that if you want fabric, email me or call me at 219-617-2021 and I will dye especially for your needs.

I expect to by dyeing around April 24th. Who wants fabric?