rocks

Making Rocky Roads: Rocks Out of Cheesecloth

| ellenanneeddy
texturized pebbles

Once I find something that works, I tend to stick to it. A creature of habit, like anyone else. What pushes me out of the box? Mistakes! Misorder! An inability to find what I need! Basically, it takes a catastrophe. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be a big catastrophe for it to do the job.

I really love using rocks in my work. They weigh a piece. They can form a visual line. They add a dark shadow or highlights depending on your color choices that frames the piece. They identify the bottom of a piece.

972 Shelter from the Storm unstitched rocks

I’ve used hand-dye for years for rocks. It already has that mottled texture and color. I used to soft edge the appliqué so the edges weren’t as obvious, but I’ve come to like the shading I can do with black thread. Inner shading works better with a straight stitch. Outside edge works best with a thin zigzag top, and a heavier shaded bottom.

texturized rocks

I sat down and started cutting rocks for the Octopus surround and realized, I didn’t have enough rock fabric. I dye greys and browns specifically for rocks, But there is almost never enough. And greys and browns are regular backing colors I use all the time. But if you’re working on three quilts at once, that’s a lot of rocks.

They also need to be differing colors. Rocks are never all the same. That’s part of their charm. They need to fit well enough to be identified as rocks, but they need a separate individuality to work.

Earlier this year, I ordered a box of cheesecloth. I use dyed cheesecloth for leaves, flowers, and other translucent things. I bought a box of cheesecloth at Joann’s every year or so. That cheesecloth was a uniform open weave,

Now that Joann’s is gone, I found that cheesecloth is graded in sizes by the number of threads per inch. Makes sense. It’s how we class thread and fabric.

I overestimated and ended up with a much tighter weave of cheesecloth. At first, I thought it wasn’t a problem. Then I realized it was much less transparent and much more like regular cotton.

I’d dyed a batch that sat on my table for a long time. It lacked the same transparent grid of the lighter-weight cheesecloth, and didn’t do the texture of leaves as well.

When I went to clear the table, there it was, in about a dozen browns and greys.

So if I use cheesecloth for rocks, what changes? I have to choose a background that will show through. The weave will show through as a grid of sorts, but that can be pulled in different directions and stretched.

Normally, I stitch my rocks on black felt, because it gives me an edge that fits with the stitching. If it’s all backed in felt, it should work.

Interestingly enough, what changes is how the stitching looks. Straight stitching sinks into the texture of the cheesecloth and is less visible. But the cheesecloth makes it more textured.

I’m not sold on cheesecloth for rocks, but I think it works here. I can always stitch heavier.

Rethinking Rocks

| ellenanneeddy

Just like I’m not a desert girl, I’m not a rock girl either. I don’t think in terms of dry. As an artist it’s always good to stretch past what you know how to do.

The post, Good Bones:Rocks from Water, covers how I’ve usually done rocks.

For the longest time, I’ve cut rocks out of hand dye, and been satisfied with them. But I really wanted to do a waterfall with carp. And you can’t have a waterfall without somewhere from the water to fall from. That would be rocks.

I put up some cut grey and brown rocks and looked at them. They looked hopelessly childish and wrong.

It’s a bad moment. It’s also a great invitation. You dig deep, you look at it in different ways, and try to morph what you already know into what you need to do next.

That sent me spinning off to my library to look at how other people handle rocks. I have a book of Elizabeth Doolittle that’s full of great mountain imagery. And a great book on Glacier National Park with some fabulous waterfalls.

The real treasure was my Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, the classic sumi painting text. It said that trees were all about the veins in the leaves, but that rocks were about the grain in the rocks.

I thought about that for a while. Then I realized, the occlusions in the hand dye are the grains in the rock.

I replanned the rocks for the waterfall. Instead of making strips of rocks, I cut chunks. I filled in areas with smaller rocks and gravel.

Then I texturized the rocks, putting on a dark under edge and shading at the bottom third, and followed the patterns of the hand dye as grain. I used black thread and a zigzag stitch to establish the bottom of the rock and then shaded with a long-short stitch. Finally I followed the grain of the rock using the elements of the hand dye. Since I did a lot of stitching, I made them separate from the piece on stitch and tear and felt as stabilizers.

I’m still unsure. But I’m closer. I need to make the rocks that define the pond underneath and sort out the waterfall, but I think it’s on its way.

These rocks need to be less regular. I tried to use perspective to determine the shading, but simple shading seemed to work better.

It’s a slower process. I’m stymied on the desert quilt while I’m waiting for the books I ordered to figure out sand textures. It’s not just sewing, it’s thinking.

What do you think? Are these rocks over-fussy, or do they add the right amount of texture.?

Next week, adding the waterfalls and koi.