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’ve been working for some time on my octopuses, and I’ve begun to build up backgrounds. I’m working on three of them simultaneously. It’s complicated. But if I work one piece at a time, changes in construction creep in. It’s almost unconscious. I may have worked the water a different way, or the rocks are different, and won’t fit in. This way, I’ll have three pieces that flow into eachother seamlessly.
This week I worked on seashells and jellyfish. I’ve been collecting stencils ( there are no commercial seashell rubbing plates I know of) to make rubbing plates. I used foam board for a base, and modeling paste to make rubbing plates of the stencils. You’ll find full instructions for this in Modeling Paste: All it Needs Is Peppermint Flavor
I used this rock backsplash I got from Lowes to make the pebbles.
This is one of the backgrounds I chose for the octopuses. I’m still not sure about Octopus 1. I’m tending towards the green-blue background. I wanted seashells and pebbles on the sea floor, and jellyfish floating above. I found I couldn’t place them correctly all at once. I put in the shells, then the jellyfish and finally the pebbles.
It’s a work in process. I’m waiting for them to dry to get the next photos and then we’ll add what’s needed. I think today will be cloudy with a chance of fish drawings.
I didn’t have any shows this year. Which is ok. Every artist has ideas they aren’t quite sure how to approach. Instead, I spent a lot of time trying out ideas I wanted t do my quilts. That takes time and effort. It messes with production significantly. So I’m glad to have spent my studio time this last year in this way.
I learned how to make waterfalls.
There and Bacl Agaom
I learned how to make a reflection of my subject in water.
In the shell
I worked on seashells and tenacles.
B;lue Herons
I experimented with extreme borders.
I learned to make my own rubbing plates from stencils.
Three Cranes
I learned to incorporate those plates into my work.
I worked in desert landscapes.
I finally worked out the cat head fountain.
It’s been a good year for learning. If you’ve followed my blog, you know, because each week I show you what I’m working out, working on, and working through.
Here’s to 2025:
Major quilts
Small work
Unfinished work
I couldn’t do this without your support. Not necessarily monetarily, but spiritually, personally, and energetically. No art is in a vacuum. I suspect that I would do art if it were just me arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but your company on this journey has made it much more worthwhile.
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.
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?
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 Birdsfor 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.
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.
I’m a bit shy about this, but all art runs not only on desire or passion solely. There are bills to pay and we hope all of us as artists to sell enough work to pay them.
But those of us who have taught, who have shown, who have written to share their art know that much of what we do is never paid for, except in the sense that we pay back the people who came before us. It’s how we make a community for all the artists we know.
So if you would like to support me, buy me a cup of coffee, or let me know I’ve helped or inspired you in some way, here’s a tip jar. I know you’ve supported me all along my journey as an artist. If you’d like to express that in a monetary way, I’d be much obliged. Thanks!
