Whether you think they’re great or their tacky, silk flowers and leaves make a great three dimensional addition to a quilt surface.
From my fall leaf collection
At one guild meeting someone gave me some silk leaves that had been packaging for the tables. I didn’t know what I’d do with them. But the colors were great.I tucked them in my bag and said thanks. Then I forgot about them.
They cluttered around the studio for some while, and then I had a quilt that needed them. This quilt ran on the tension between oranges and blues. Those hot orange shaded leaves were wonderful! And I was hooked.
Cheese cloth leaves
I’d spent a lot of time making leaves of numerous things: cheesecloth, organza, hand dye, felt, and lace. I love them too. But it’s a more abstracted look. The silk leaves gave me instant leaves with fabulous detail.
Since then, I’ve haunted the dollar store and craft shops looking for leaves and flowers. What’s available changes with the seasons and the fashions. The fall leaves are obvious, but the flowers change with season as well. The good news is that even a small garland or batch can give you petals and leaves for years and years of quilts
‘A word about the fiber content. These aren’t silk. I’ve never heard them calling anything but that, but they are actually polyester. Sometimes they’re already heat treated for texture. Do they wash? Probably about as well as most things I use on quilts. They withstand water just fine, but they don’t handle abrasion and folding well. They need to be treated gently.
This quilt needed a few flowers in the background. I tried stitching them in with thick thread, but I really didn’t like the look. I found a silk mum I took apart. I didn’t like it at all as a flat flower, but when I folded it in quarters, it was perfect. I stitched in a green calix , stem and some lines to define the flowers. I’m in love.
Willow Marsh
Every flower is a surprise and not everything works the same way.
hydrangea petals
Smaller flowers work better stitched down as a whole.
Golden Cicada
You may need a wire cutter to take the flowers apart. They have those at the dollar store too.
Wire cutters
I keep bins of different leaves and flowers I’ve dismantled. I never know when I’ll need them. They add extra texture, color and pizzazz
There’s nothing like being on a roll with a piece. You’re sewing away. You have one more bit to do, or maybe three or maybe five. It’s a bit questionable but you push through because it’s so good to be done.
By now I should be prescient about that. That’s a ledge with a chasm right by it. And I should know I’m likely to fall. I did that this week.
three fish
I had that green heron quilt ready to go. Got the heron on. Looked at the fish and decided I needed an odd number. Three was a bit empty. So I decided on five.
five fish
Did I look? Actually I did. Did I think? Perhaps that’s the problem. My brain knows that odd numbers work better than even ones. My eye knew the fifth fish just didn’t fit in. I listened to my brain. Not so smart.
Theories don’t always work. If your eye tells you it’s wrong, then it’s wrong. Had I listened I would have saved myself three hours with a mustache trimmer and seam ripper. And a ruined fish.
Design is important. So is color. So is drawing. But in the end, it’s how the piece balances and flows when it’s all done. This is the part you can foul up with everything else right. And the answer is simple. You need to look at it.
Not just put it up and see. Put it where you can really analyze whether it balances and flows and whether there’s stuff.
I’m bad at this. That moment when I get that urge to finish…. it gets me every time I follow it.
So how do we look at a quilt differently?
Old school is to just back away far enough from it to see it. It’s not enough to see it laid on the table. You need to hang it to see it. I used to hang really large pieces off the porch and walked down the alley to really see it.
I’ve also used a a wide angle viewer. These let you view a big quilt in a small space. They are very valuable.
Another old school method is a ruby beholder, or a color evaluator. It’s a red or green piece of plastic where you can see the values in your quilt as opposed to the colors. It’s a huge help.
All of that steps back to a digital camera. And yes, your cell phone will probably do that.
Just get far enough back to photo the whole piece. And then, changed the photo to black and white. You can see the movement, whether something needs to be put over slightly to one side. Whether you’ve just got a hole or it’s too cluttered. Whether something disappears. It will also show you if you’ve got a value problem.
My bird is a bit subtle here. But I don’t think I mind that. He’s hunting after all, so he needs to be.
Leaves in place
It’s always better to do that before you sew things down. You would think I would learn. Experience is the best teacher, and some fools will have no other.
Every time I demo, I have someone ask if I really sew that fast. Yes. Yes I do.
But not on everything. It depends largely on the kind of sewing you’re doing.
I’ve always said there were two sewing speeds: straight and zigzag. Why? Because different techniques work better with different speeds.
Straight stitching is better at a medium speed. both foot pedal and hands. Too fast you lose control. Too slow you start wobbling. That would be for stippling, bobbin work, and line drawing.
Zigzag stitching is different, The faster you can sew with a zigzag stitch, the better you can fill in the space. It’s possible to go so fast you go over the edge or over your thumb. But barring that, machine speed is your friend , Now your hands are a whole different thing. They move at a crawl, holding hoop to slide it extra slowly, again so you can fill everything in well.
I don’t every really sew slowly. It makes me crazy. Particularly for the zigzag stitch. It just takes so long. You also lose those smooth lines sewing slowly.
Recently I bought a Bernina 790. It’s a proper speed demon, I’ve been working on these larger zigzag appliques and I realized something. They used to take me a lot more time. I’ve been cutting 2-4 days off the embroidery time with a faster machine.
It makes sense. I just hadn’t thought that way. The faster you sew the faster you’re done. I hadn’t realized what a difference that machine was making.
My dad used to say if there was a job that took to long, was too hard or too nasty, you had the wrong tool. The right tool could change all of that. I still haven’t trotted that machine out for bobbin work. I’ve been too busy doing zigzag embroidered appliques to get there.
On of the features of the new machine is that it counts stitches. It tells me I put three million stitches in since October. I think you can see how that happened. I did these fourth birds over the last the last month
What does that mean for you? Find the best machine you can to do the work you want to do. You can work hard. You can work smart. And you can let your machine help. That doesn’t mean the most expensive machine. Try machines out with what you want to do. You’ll know the difference. The right machine makes it so much easier.
When should you slow down sewing? Mostly when you loose control of your stitch or when you start breaking thread in a way that makes you crazy. Other than that, I’d blaze away.
One of the issues with free motion embroidery is that it always puckers up. You always have some distortion. The worst is that the distortion is uneven and unpredictable. Sometimes it pulls the piece out of shape or makes it unrecognizable. Free motion objects take a lot of time. It’s heart breaking to have them distort past usability. It’s best to adjust for that from the start.
There’s some time honored ways to deal with distortion. First make the embroidery off the surface of the quilt. It can be applied afterwards with minimal distortion. I will be talking about separate embroideries in this article, although the information works for both off and on the quilt surface.
Stabilizers help a lot. Small embroideries under 2″ use three stabilizers all together. The drawing itself is on Totally Stable. It’s a lightweight stabilizer that irons on and is removeable. Stitch and Tear is the next layer. It’s a stiff tear away Pellon. Then I use a layer of acrylic felt that absorbs much of the stitching. I prefer the thinner versions. I attach the stitch and tear and felt with 505 spray. For anything larger, I use a layer of hand dyed fabric as the top layer.
Do remember that the drawing on the back will face the opposite side on the front. I know, I know. Think of it as looking through a slide backwards.
Now it gets confusing. My drawing layer is on the back. I’m going to turn it upside down to stitch. I’m not going to call them top and bottom. The sandwich has a front and the back. For stitching purposes the front is on the bottom and the back is on top. Got it?
I am using two hoops. Sharon Schamber’s red weighted halo hoop is my very favorite. It has a weighted core and a rubber coating. It grips and the weight supplies support.
Now it’s all up to the drawing. We can’t accurately predict the distortion but we can take some good guesses. To do that we need to look at the zigzag stitch
The zigzag stitch pulls across the stitch. The more layers of stitching, the more distortion. For a larger piece, you need to draw to adjust for that distortion. Mostly that means that things need to be a lot wider and bit longer. But you need to analyze the drawing to see where the distortion is likely to be bad.
So if you’re doing a straight zigzag stitch down the legs, it will shrink in the width. You’ll want to make it a bit wider there so it doesn’t become pencil thin.
Bird feathers end with a band of stitching around the end of the feather. Again, making the feathers longer and a bit too wide gives your a bit of extra space there will help eliminate the shrinkage effect.
original imageadjusted imagenew traced image
I’ve elongated the wings and body on the kingfisher. I wasn’t able to get it completely embroidered to show you, but you can see the shrinking on the feather and the wings
back side of bird mostly embroideredfront side of bird mostly embroidered
It’s not a science. But you can hedge your bets for your best look. Keep watching my face book page to see how this bird looks finished.
What happens if you guess wrong? Several things. Sometimes that wrong guess works better than a correct guess. Sometimes I cut into an embroidery and anchor it with stitching to address the error. One thing is certain. Perfect happens somewhere else. I’m content with beautiful.
I’m a long time hand dyer. I started dyeing fabric when I was ten. My fabric is sponge dyed, which means it can include endlessly different shades. It creates a light source and a small world in itself. What I’ve been reminded of this week is that the background changes everything. It isn’t like you take the elements for a quilt and just transfer them over. The background has an opinion of it’s own. And it demands different things.
This week I embroidered a green heron. I’m pleased with it. Because it worked out so well, I found myself fussing over the background. Originally I tried this background. I liked it. It had an excellent place for a stand of lady slippers. It was right with a moon. I pinned up the heron and watched it disappear before my eyes.
It broke my heart. I thought I knew what I was doing. I went back to my fabric drawer and found several more pieces that might work.
Second green background
There was a green background that gave a little more contrast with the bird. I moved the rocks over on it. Hung it up. Pinned on the bird and found it disappeared there too. There was a huge chrysanthemum clearly in the piece. But it was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Red background
So I pulled out the crazy fabric. Two bright pink/purple/red pieces. It changed the season. The red one needed swirling leaves and a muddy pond rather than a blue one. And there was a sort of “where’s the fire? quality to it.
The darker of the pinks was sort of crazy but fabulous. The bird popped. And it desperately needed fish.
Purple background
What am I doing now? Drawing the fish for it. Not so many but some. And falling leaves. Go figure.
Fish drawing
And it appears this has started me onto a series. I have the backgrounds all prepped and ready. I think I need a kingfisher and a blue heron. Back to the drawing board. Quite literally.
Diving kingfisher. I think it’s the next step.
I could use any kind of fabric. But hand dye is the only fabric that helps me design this way. It’s bossy. But I’m willing to listen, because it gives really good advice.
Feathers are perfect subjects for thread. Birds too, but there are many kinds of feathers, defined as always by the angle of the zigzag stitch.
I’ve been working on two birds this couple of weeks: a green heron and a goldfinch.
Goldfinch
It starts with a drawing. This is a drawing on Totally Stable. It goes on the back of the sandwich so it’s my pattern.
The head and underbody of the bid are soft overall feathers. These can be made with a back and forth zigzag stitch done side to side. Layer after layer of thread blends the colors.
Underbelly and leg Head top section of wings
The upper part of the wing follows the arc of the feather, shaded with the side to side zigzag The feathers are lined with gold and soft yellow to define them.
Pinions
The pinion feather stitching is made with angled stitches down the feather with a curved arc at the end.
The streak
These feathers have a streak of yellow defining the quill.
Quills do
All in all the stitching separates the kinds of feathers. And creates a bird made strictly of thread and stitchery.
Commissions force us to do many things. I don’t do realism well. Realism is why God made cameras. Art isn’t limited to realism. But there are people who love it. And need it. Truth to be told, l’m not good at it.
So my birds have purple and blue in them, and so do my frogs. It’s part shading, part colors building.
Dragonflies and roses detail l
I tend to make roses on spirals. It’s the way petals unfold.
Sometimes I let the tails spiral out. I like their motion. I’m told it’s not very realistic.
I have used rubbing plates for a more real rose. This is oil paint stick on hand dyed fabric. Outlined in metallic threads.
Lately I’ve tried roses with the points trimmed away or tucked in.
Will they be realistic enough? That remains to be seen. But they are probably as real as I can get.
I was talking with a dear friend this week, over the holidays and we discussed all of our new work. I’ve been unable to leave the visual/vertical paths alone this year. She told me she had been working on smaller things. We’re both of an age. Wailing a huge quilt through a sewing machine is past aerobic. But it occurred to me: We only make bed size art quilts because we still think of them as quilts. Shows define them as bed coverings/ linens. We make them as art. But we are still restrained when we show them to think in terms of bed sizes.
That’s simply awkward. What I make warms from the wall visually. It’s not made to be lain on. Metallic thread will vigorously defend itself from anyone who wants to use it on a blanket. So will organza, or stabilizer, or angelina fiber. When I make a quilt, it’s made for someone to snuggle into. It’s pretty. But it’s made to be a bed linen. When I make a tapestry, it’s made to glorify the wall.
Just practically, it’s sort of hard to find a queen size wall to hang an art quilt on. The standard bed sizes are made for beds. I see nothing wrong with that. But I look forward to the day when we understand that excellence is not measured in size, that standard size only works for some things, and that a piece of art always is measured by it’s impact, not by following size requirements. And that normal is a setting strictly on the drier.
We may have come to that, one by one as art quilters , fiber artists, and contemporary quilters. I’ve always skirted the world as a quilter. I work in, three layers ( at least) sewn together, so I fit under that description.
Art is not about practicality. It is about seeing and building the beauty in our lives. Sometimes our lives are our art. We build our lives in ways that make us whole, make us sound, make others happy, make us strong, whole, and joyous. Sometimes our art is our life: those moments where we live and breathe in what we can make visual out of imagination and the things around us. But either way, they are our birthright. We are artists just by way of being human. We do art, as we can when we can. But we are artists because we live and breathe in a world we impact with what we see, what we dream and what we do.
For this next year, I wish your art to kindle the fire of hope, creation, joy, passion and warmth. Without needing to fit any standard size or expected purpose. I hope you art shines just as it is, just as you are. Just as we all are. In Imagine Dei.
