Free Motion Applique

Do You Need an Industrial Sewing Machine?

| ellenanneeddy

This has been a burning question for me over the last 6 months. I live and die by my sewing machines. It’s what I do. I sew every day around 4-5 hours a day.

Over that time, I;ve locked up 2 220s, 2 930s and a 770, all Berninas known to be tough and durable. I’ve felt like a general who’s horse has died, getting on another horse and inadvertently shooting the new one. It’s been ghastly.

What it’s about is the intense embroideries. They feel like the heart of my work. They’re intense, detailed, textured, and, pardon my vanity, show stopping.

I can’t seem to make them without breaking machines.

I went through this a long time ago. I burned the brushes off my 930 and bought an industrial 20U Singer. It was not a perfect answer. It was way too fast. It chomped through thread. It was incredibly noisy. And impossible to control.

Eventually, I stopped making those larger embroideries.

Lately I’ve needed to work those large embroideries. And we rescued the 20 U from where I left it at Porter.

It was the right decision. Don put a servo motor on it to slow it down. It did a very nice job with my #40 polyester threads.

What is a servo motor?

I’m not sure of the mechanics of the thing. Functionaly it’s an industrial motor with a rhiostat. You can adjust the speed to your taste. It’s infinately more quiet, and takes up a lot less energy.

I wouldn’t say it was the right thing for everyone.

What can an industrial machine offer you?

It is

  • An incredibly tough machine
  • An incredibly fast machine
  • An extra wide zigzag stitch

Those are very different skillls from a home machine.

There is a down side.

  • They are huge. They take up a large footprint in studio space.
  • They are harder to manuver. I’m still finding my way about managing stitch angle with it.
  • Unless you slow them down, they’re too fast for many threads and applications. The servo motor is the best way to control that.
  • You can’t pick it up and take it to a mechanic. You’ll need to fix it yourself or find a mechanic who does house calls.
  • They’re kind of crude. They’re rough machines mechanically. Simple to work with but they’re not sophisticated.

Don made this work for me by installing a servo motor. That motor is a miracle. So is Don. I’m grateful for both.

Am I sorry to be working with an older machine? No. They don’t change that much. As far as the changes in machines over the last 50 years, the most important one was being able to set needle up, needle down. With the servo motor, it’s in excellent fighting shape. These machines are indestructable.

Am I thrilled? Yes. Downside and all, I can tackle those big pieces without making a collection of broken sewing machines. Will I use if for everything? Probably not. Again, hard to control.

Want to come play with my new machine? Give me a call and come over. It’s like running a tyranasarus that sews.

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.

There’s No Antidepressant Like Color. Except for a New Machine

| ellenanneeddy

For those of you who have been following along, you know we had a machine crisis for most of last year. It turns out that what I’m doing is really hard on machines. I’m finding my modern machines are just not up to the challenge.

Enter Ebay and Don!

Don found me a newly restored 930 Bernina, It’s a love. It’s still not a strong enough machine for the denser embroideries, but that’s ok. We have a servo motor for the old industrial Singer 20u. Don says he will be ready to start the switch on the motors perhaps next week.

1169-25 In the Shell

So in celebration for the new baby, and because I finally had the right tool, I got In the Shell finally bound.

Do you remember the feeling when you got a new box of 64 crayons? That’s a large enough number that they had some with silly names like Mac and Cheese. Open up the box. Choose your color. Instant antidepressant!

This quilt had the same effect. It got me through machine withdrawal, over the last months.

Madiera has a line of polyester embroidery thread called Neon. It isn’t all neon color. There are restrained greys and browns. But there are some kick ass oranges, yellows, greens, pinks, and reds, You get the idea.

This quilt was a mood lifter. Partially because I love the idea of a baby octopus in a shell, and partially because the colors could knock socks off.

Between the machine and those colors, I’m feeling so much better now.

Never be afraid to use the brightest, boldest colors. They’re not only lovely. They’re good fiber for your diet. And they fight depression. Eat the rainbow!

She Sells Sea Shells: A Study in Contrast

| ellenanneeddy

I haven’t made a lot of shells before. Starfish, yes. Jellyfish, inevitable. I find shells daunting. They’re not easy to draw, and they can’t be made to look like they’re moving. So this was an experiment.

Designg for contrast

One way to look at design is how to separate the field from the ground. You need to create differences that help the eye sort out what it’s looking at. The shells should be immediately different from the octopus and the sea.

This quilt required a shell for the octopus, And a tangible difference between them to be visually clear. The way to make things pop is to create a visual difference between differnt design elements of color, texture and size.

The color palate makes a clear separationg. The octopus is strongly orange, contrasted by the complemetary blue sea, and the off white and browns of the shells.

But we can make that contrast even stronger through the texture. Texture is made by stitching patterns, thread content, and thread size. Those design decisions clarify the design.

Shells are deeply textured with a smooth inside. I didn’t show the shiny insides of these shells. So the outsides needed to be crunchy and rough.

So the octopus is garnet stitch in polyester thread. The shells are out of both wound and flecked metallic threads. The threads contrast strongly. Metallic thread is much rougher than the smooth polyester. Both threads are 40 weight.

I also used a zigzagged scallop pattern for the shells. I stitched the rows irregularly with ribbed veins, so they’d seem more natural.

‘

The water is stiched with an 8 weight metallic to separate it from the shells and the octopus.

Thread choices help the eye separate the shells, the octopus, and the water, ‘It helps your viewer unnderstand what is happening in your piece in a glance.

This piece is ready to back and bind. I’m just waiting for a cool enough day.

A Great Frame up: Centering a Design with a Frame

| ellenanneeddy

One of the things that’s hard about a circular image is that it doesn’t move very easily. As a design. Circles lie like a lump unless you put them in a row or on a path.

I love this octopus in a shell, but it was static. There are several ways to create motion in a piece. Creating a visual path with rocks or shells would have worked. But I wanted something showier.

The best piece of fabric I had was a half-yard of blue hand-dye. But the shell didn’t fill it up. I could cut it to fit the shell. But a square wouldn’t work

So I decided to make a frame. But a rectangle was no better. There’s nothing square about an octopus. They flow with the ocean tide. They exude curves.

So if I wasn’t going to put the octopus in a rectangle or a square of some kind.

I needed to apply a different aesthetic. When you need design help, go look at great art. They knew what they were doing.

I’m a huge fan of Art Nouveau.

“Art Nouveau is …known for its flowing, organic shapes, curved lines, and reliance on natural motifs like flowers and plants. The movement aimed to unify all artistic disciplines, creating a holistic design experience.” Wikipedia

Art Nouveau has always made my heart beat faster. Natural organic forms that flow in movement, are based on the oriental concept of the visual path and movement make perfect sense to me.

I hadn’t seen an Art Nouveau octopus before. Japanese art is full of them. But tentacles would make a marvelous frame.

One thing about octopuses is that you don’t always see all of them. They hide, they move, they twist in the water. They don’t stay in one place while you take their picture. So I made three tentacles of another octopus, encircling the one in the shell.

Besides, the tentacles interact with the rest of the water and the jellyfish.

This is all pinned up and ready to stitch. I hope none of it splashes into the studio.

Not every frame is a box. A frame centers your design, accentuates it, and interacts with it. It is there to put the subject in the center of attention. Who says you have to be square?

Wisteria Blossoms

| ellenanneeddy

Sometimes hand-dye designs your quilt for you.

I had embroidered a radiated spoonbill landing, and I needed a background for her. This purply brown piece seemed nicely swampy and I loved the range of purple running in an arc through it. It looked like a bower of wisteria, so that’s what I went through.

I’ve done wisteria before. I sometimes feel I can smell them in the studio as I stitch on them

I wanted particularly soft glowing wisteria for this very dark swamp. These were done mostly from hand-painted lace, stitched with poly neon.

And small bright birds sitting in them.

On thing leads to another. The bird leads to the swamp background. The swamp leads to a wisteria bower. And the wisteria need bright little birds.

Wisteria, like roses, sunflowers, and hollyhocks, are part of the garden of my dreams. I can’t help but slip them in wherever their fragrance and illumination are needed.

The next step is to fit everything in together with a pond at the bottom, birds, and small fish.

On the other side of the studio, we have 2 torn-up 930 Berninas. Don has been heroically deciding which will live and which will be a parts machine. I’m working on the only functional embroidery machine, an 807 Bernina from around 1970. It’s a tiny machine, originally for classroom. We’re waiting for the resurrection, which sometimes spreads more slowly than you would like. It means I’m not able to work the 2 large quilts I have laid out at the moment. So….

An ocean floor, several external tenacles lots of jellyfish, I think. On a much smaller piece of fabric.

fluffy: Making Feathers with the Long and Short Stitch

| ellenanneeddy

This is what I did this week. She’s a secretary bird.

I have to thank John Muir Laws book Law’s Guide to Drawing Birds for its descriptions and information about different kinds of feathers. I’ve been pleased with my pinions, tails and wing feathers for some while, although I wanted them to be less stripey.

I like these pinions. But even with overstitching, they look a bit stripey to me. I’ve been working at overcoming that look by more irregular uneven stitching on the feathers and overstitching.

Body feathers are different. They’re fluffy. They aren’t a part of the flight system. Instead, they are a body cover.

The Long-Short Stitch

I went back to an old embroidery stitch pattern that gave me exactly what I needed, The long short stitch is made by moving your hands unevenly from side to side with your stitching. I made the scallops I would have made for breast feathers, but ragged and without outline so they blend into each other.

Long-short stitch

  • Fills in beautifully.
  • Doesn’t need an outline.
  • Doesn’t need to completely cover the fabric to be effective.
  • Is easy and forgiving.
  • Utilizes a simple zigzag stitch moved from side to side.
  • Progresses nicely. You can add multiple colors of stitchery to build shadow and form without adding a hard line.

The long short stitch in freemotion embroidery has nothing to do with a machine stitch set on your machine. It’s all in how you move your fabric through the needle.

The piece shades from dark underneath to brighter up the neck. But because there’s no internal outline, it looks like fluffy feathers. It’s a bit tougher because we’re shading to white. It needs to look white without actually being a white hot spotlight.

I’m planning this background and sun. Not sure what happens after that. Heavy grasses, I think.

For more information about the long-short stitch check out The Long and the Short of It.

Bird Feet: The Difference in the Details

| ellenanneeddy

One of the reasons I like working larger is that I get to play with the details. Smaller images sometimes only need a line of stitching to define things. Larger images allow me to play with color and texture. And the space to make the details count.

There are a couple of defining factors. Are the legs and feet segmented? A solid line of black stitching defines that.

These feet were stitched with progressive colors in garnet stitch, small circles intertwined together.

Does the stitching flow into itself? These have simpler feet and legs with segments.

Does it have patterned stitching? These were stitched in u-shaped scales.

Garnet stitch textures these feet with quieter tones.

Of course, the angle of the legs creates the movement of the bird.

And you can cheat by putting the feet in water.

Different textures, different treatments make the kind of details that define the piece.