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.
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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.
This is a cautionary tale. I’m hoping someone can learn from my mistakes.
Maybe you can sew too much.
This has been a bad year for sewing machines. I’m trying to figure out whether I’m really sewing that much more or whether it’s attrition, or just bad luck. I’ve broken 3 220s, been told my 770 is worn out at 31 million stitches (in four years) and had two 930s break down.
My mechanic has two of my machines in shop. I was down to working with a 807 minimatic. I love my mechanic. She’s meticulous. On average, she takes 2 months to fix a machine. It’s not an instant fix.
For this discussion, I’m leaving brand names off the machines. You’ll probably know what the numbers mean. They are all machines known for their tough durability. That doesn’t seem to be enough right now.
Thank you, God, for Don.
I knew Don had worked on vacuum cleaners in the deep dark past. I didn’t understand what that meant. Don is a small motor specialist. Sewing machines are about small motors. He had fuddled with several older machines and got them working. I had no idea how skilled he was.
I had two 930s. One was my machine from when I started. I picked up the second because the first was soooooooo good.
I had put them up on the rack and not used them for a while. But as machines kept going down it got more desperate. We pulled them down, decided which was less beat up. It sewed like a top for around a month and then locked. We brought out the second machine, made some adjustments. I got two months out of that. Then it jammed.
I was so upset I couldn’t even cry.
In came St Don. He watched a bunch of videos, took both machines apart. We saw what was fixable, and was not. Then we had the kind of transplant surgery where really only one patient survived. He dusted it off, I oiled everywhere and now I have Frank En 930. But it’s working.
What did I learn? What would I say to anyone doing the kind of embroidery I’m doing?
Skip the bells and whistles. You need something tough. I do think most of the machines today are much more fragile.
If you have a machine that’s working for your craft, don’t ever turn it in for another machine. It’s not necessarily able to do the same things for you.
If you have an older machine that’s working for you, find an extra one for a parts machine. It doesn’t need even to run. But it means you have the parts to fix things, even down to the right screws.
You’ll probably need someone like Don. You can’t have him but you can find a reasonable facsimile. If you do, feed him plates of brownies and videos. Other treats may be applicable. You need someone able and willing to hunt the snark (whatever is wrong with your machine), and brave enough to take the back off the machine. I’m fixing his third batch of cookies today. We can’t let him run out.
My next sewing machine
This has changed how I feel about my machines. Instead of looking for the great new features (which are a wonder) I’m looking for something with alligator blood. Pulling out my 40 year old Berninas was a really good patch on this.
So I pulled out another old machine I hadn;t even moved with me when I moved to Ga;lesburg. Luckily, the man renting my house had left it in a safe place and not disposed of it. A 20 u is the machine I bought when I blew the brushes off my 930 for the first time. It’s the machine you’d find at a drycleaners. Very fast. Uncontrolable except for straight stitch clothes construction. In the end, I stopped doing the elaborate embroideries.
But those are at the heart of what I’m currently doing. I can’t give them up. They are at the heart of my art right now. They are the flame I’m drawn to.
Things change. My threads and stabilizers have changed since then. And what is available for a fix has chnged too.
I’m putting a servo motor on my 20u industrial to see if we can tame that machine to a reasonable speed for embroidery. And I’m looking for another 930. Other than for demo, I’m done with plastic toys.
Don, neither plastic or a toy, is a total keeper. So he is now St Don, for healing the halt, the lame, and the blind stitch.
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.
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.
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.
There’s no help for it. If you are shading a pink bird, you’ll need to use pastels at some point. I’m not a fan. But you don’t get to throw out a section on the color wheel. Eventually, you’ll need all the values: tones, jewels, and pastels. Tones and jewels. Yes! Pastels. not that much.
Let me break down the color scheme for you.
There are six color zones, in the feathers of this bird, and then a zone for the neck and thighs, the feet, the head and the bill.
There are two progressive color themes going on. The pink under body and feathers, and the green overstitching. Both progress from dark to light.
Where did it go wrong? I chose the wrong yellow.
White objects are rarely pure white, unless you want a posterized deco look. They’re made up of other colors pale enough to be perceived as white. The bird itself is pink. I pulled in bits of lavender and yellow to blend it and to create a shadowed projection. I chose the wrong yellow. If you look at the top feather, you can see a strip of yellow that’s pretty loud.
You know that kind of Easterbunny pastel. Yellow, pink, blue, purple, and maybe green. It’s only appealing if you’re under the age of five. It missed here. I stitched some cream and natural white thread all over it.
Then I added the overstitching. The overstitching takes center stage, and the yellower bits back off. I think I’ve saved it. It also browns out the pinks a bit. They’re all there, but quieter for the green.
What should I have done? I should have lined up that yellow in a row with the other colors and taken a black and white picture of it. I would have known right there. But I’m happy with it now.
I’m ready for the next step, which is the background. And I think it needs yellow fish and birds.
This last year has been a disaster for my sewing machines. Most of my work depends on intense embroidery. Lately I’ve depended more and more on that stitchery for my images. I love it. But it does wear and tear on the machines. I had 6 major machine breakdowns. last year. I broke down 3 220s, my 770, my 630 and a 930. Some have fixed. Some have not.
I’m a Bernina girl from way back and have been a Bernina Ambassador for most of my career. I work with Berninas because they are tough and they stitch accurately. That doesn’t mean they don’t break down, Particularly if you’re sewing at speed demon speed for hours on end. I was told this is my fault.
I suppose it is. It’s what I do. I can either back away from this kind of stitching or find another way.
Zigzag embroidery allows for intense detail and color, I can’t step away from it. I also can’t keep breaking machines. So something has to change.
Don is my miracle in this. He’s a wizard with older small motors. He’s not specialized in sewing machines, but very mechanically savvy. He’s collecting manuals and parts machines. As always, he’s my hero.
I really can’t function though without a working machine and I prefer 2 backups. I’m not exa sane without a sewing machine.
Years ago I bought a 20 U Singer for intense embroidery. That’s not what these machines are known for. In a way, they’re the cockroach of the sewing machine world. Not in the sense that they hide under the cupboards, but because they are pretty much unkillable. You find them most often in dry cleaner shops for repairs.
It was a mixed success. This thing eats babies and cats, breaks thread constantly, and is fast—too fast—even with different slower pulleys. And it was the weight of a tiny elephant. When I left Porter, I left it in my studio, where it has sat.
Ken, the person renting my house, offered to bring it to me. That in itself is a huge glft But I’ve had my reservations about making this machine work. I first felt I was stepping backward, Is it an answer to the same problem? Is this machine tough enough?
Well, we know it’s tough. Can we make it work with embroidery thread? There’s the question. It’s also paid for.
It had its problems before. But things have changed. I now use stronger threads. I no longer work in a hoop. And we found that a servo motor would step down the speed. So it’s coming to the studio sometime this month, and we try it out. I’ve gone from feeling like I’m stepping back to seeing new possibilities.
You can’t step in the same river twice. You are different and the water is different.
I’m digging out the studio this week to make room, which is why I don’t have new work to show you. I’ll let you know what happens next.
Wish me luck. I think it’s time for another spoonbill.
I’ve always joked that it didn’t matter that I couldn’t do straight lines because I really didn’t want to. I tend to justify my limits a bit. I do know better.
I left behind piecing when I was a beginning quilter, because I was much more interested in quilting in creatures than following straight lines. I was also rotten at straight lines. We are defined not so much by what we take up as by what we discard.
So after years of beautiful curves and free motion ecstacies, I find myself if situations where I really do want to make a straight line. At least sometimes.
It all started with a ceiling tile. I have a ceiling tile that rubs out like prairie grass. I love it. It gives the movement of grass without a heavy shape. But the lines are basically straight.
I’ve stitched them with just my darning foot, to mixed results. I couldn’t follow the lines as well as I liked. They’re pretty, and I love the grass stems, but I wanted them to be less sloppy.
I was browsing through some videos where I found one of Leah Day using a ruler and a darning foot together. I’m quite a fan of hers. She has done a lot of good innovation with stippling and texture. She showed how to quilt with a darning foot and a ruler.
I know it’s a long-arm quilter thing, but I had never tried it. There was a special foot involved and some very pricey rulers, so I decided to try to do it on the cheap.
Berninas aren’t either really short or long shank machines. They’re a whole other system. But I do have an adapter for feet that works pretty well. I ended up ordering a short shank darning foot and a five inch omnigrid square.
The foot with the adapter was an epic fail. I could put the foot on the adapter, but it wouldn’t make a proper stitch without breaking needles.
I went through my old Bernina feet and found one that came with a really old machine. It was a darning foot with a raised lip. It worked. Clearly there’s a learning curve.
Would it have been easier to buy a new foot? I’m sure. But it was also pricey, Next time the ship comes in, I’ll buy one.
Will I do this more? There are times when a straight line is just what you need. Probably no way out.
So we have a win for old weird Bernina feet and ingenuity. I’m always pleased with new possibilities. It’s like someone slipped a new toy in my tool box. My reeds are everything I could ask for. They’re almost straight.
I wish I were someone who could take a design and execute it. I can try. It’s a case of man proposing, and God laughing. Instead, a series of decisions are to be made at each point. Each decision points to the next.
One of the most useful things I do in a class is to start a piece from scratch. It’s not like there is a direct list of what you do next. But there are some decisions to be made. It helps to have a plan.
Here is the list of things I need to decide for each piece.
Background-The hand dye creates the light and the atmosphere for the piece. It usually is the first choice. Does it have a sunspot? A pool? A field of flowers within it? It dictates almost everything, especially the lighting in a piece.
Major Images-These are the main focus. I draw them in Totally Stable, backwards. They iron on to the back of the piece and remain inside the piece as a pattern.
Atmospherics-Water, light, smoke clouds, and sometimes leaves and flowers are atmospherics. They are usually made of commercial sheers, handpainted lace, and dyed cheesecloth. They make a translucent presence in the piece.
Details/pathway-These are smaller embroideries, or stones, or leaves that can be used to create a visual pathway through the surface.
Texturizing the surface/stippling- after all that embroidery, the rest of the piece needs to be integrated. The stippling over the surface can pulls the piece together.
There are no right or wrong answers. There are simply decisions. Each defines the piece. What I choose not to do also shapes the definition. I’m OK with that. I’ve learned that each decision I reject can be featured in the next piece. Or the one after that. I’m not making one perfect piece of art. I’m creating a body of art that explores the limits and range of my techniques and my skills.
This piece, like most of them, started with a piece of fabric and the idea of herons. I dye a number of pieces of fabric as cenotes, wells of color. Some times the cenotes make a light source, but this piece made a wonderful pond.
The birds started as whistling herons. But at a certain point, they were indistinguishable from the Louisiana Blues. So I did them as blue herons. It’s important to finish the major embroideries first because they shrink. You don’t know how they’ll fit in until they’re embroidered and cut out.
The atmospherics for this piece are water and grass. The grass is an oil paint stick rubbing of a ceiling tile. The water is accentuated with c-shapes of hand painted and commercial lace. Then I put in rocks to anchor the pond and direct the eye.
I decided on damsel flies and grasshoppers, as pathway elements. They did not work the way I had hoped. The damsel flies fit in, but I’m not sure of the grasshoppers. I’ll have to finish them to be sure.
Finally, I wanted seedlings growing up through the water. I made big beautiful bold seedlings the size of God’s underpants. Again, not the best choice. I scaled that down and it was much more effective, although I might want bigger ones at the bottom.
This piece is pinned in position. I’ll be stitching soon. But most of the decisions are made, step by step, before it’s stitched down.
