textile art

Planning a Surround: Family Planning for Octopuses

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve been noodling around the idea of a series planned as a surround. I’ve done many series over the years, but this is different.

I suppose you could plan a series. But I’ve never seen it happen. You do one quilt with a subject that is either so fun or compulsive that you do another five more. That’s an organic process that I enjoy. But it doesn’t lend itself to consistency.

Spoonbill Series

These birds just happened. I love the shape of them, the bills and that crazy pink coloration. So I’ve made a number of roseated spoonbills.

We’re talking something different here. A surround has to be planned so that each piece flows into the other one. I can do that somewhat with the drawings. They need to flow across the different quilts into eachother. I can do that somewhat with background images. Rocks and seashells can make a pathway. I can also do that with small fish. I’m thinking of clownfish and something small and gold in color. That is the plan.

The coloration should be easy. The hand-dye needs to be all of the same intensity, and we’ll keep the octopuses bright. They should fitin with each other well.

The first octopus is embroidered and ready to place in background elements.

The second octopus is almost embroidered. I need to outline the suckers.

He’s already had a large change. Originally, I had one sucker tentacle closer to the head. It worked in the drawing but not in execution. So I cut it out, and moved it. I think it works better.

shell rubbings from another project

The next steps will be tricky. I plan to rub seashells into the fabric on the bottoms of all of these. They’ll need to fit into eachother. I’m not sure if I can display them all on one photo wall. But they need to dance across four pieces altogether. The last time I did something this large, I hung it off the back porch of my apartment building and walked down the alley to where I could see it as a whole. That was three homes ago. We’ll need to figure it out.

I’ll keep you posted as I work on this. I think it’s going to be a wild ride.

2025: A Year of Experimentation

| ellenanneeddy

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.

Thank you!

Not the Same River: Not the Same Piece

| ellenanneeddy

Last week I showed you my experiment recreating the elements of a piece I thought was particularly effective. At that point, it was speculative. You can read that at Again? Really. Yes. Really I’ve spent a week on it and here are my results.

I divided the parts into elements. Here are the elements I was working with.

  • The focal image
  • Hand dyed background
  • Oil paint stitck layer
  • Sheers layer’
  • Small elements
  • Background stipple.

What do these elements do?

  • The Focal Image is the answer to who. Ir creates the subject and focus of the piece.
  • The dyed background is the answer to where and when. It creates the light in the piece. It also defines the environment.
  • An oil paint rubbed layer is the texture of a piece. I don’t use it everywhere, but it gives a somewhat translucent surface without sharp edges. You can see the background, but it has shifted in color and appearance.
  • Sheers make another translucent shift across the surface. It transforms the background color and creates movement. Sheers have defined edges, but don’t have a visible thread edge.
  • Small elements can be used to establish a visual path. Flowers, rocks, leaves, bugs, birds and frogs can all point a direction through the piece.
  • Stippling changes the coloration of the surface. It creates dimension and defines light and dark.

I think I’ve failed on this piece. It’s not bad. It just isn’t as good. Why?

I’m reasonably sure of my background and my oil paint rubbing layer. The sheers can be dinked with.

I didn’t get to the small elements because I’m just not content with my drawing. These fish will add movement, but I don’t think they’ll help enough.

Oooops. Sometimes I don’t know until I get the piece embroidered. I drew other fish for this. This was the best of them, but it’s just not dramatic enough. I need a drama queen fish.

Here are the two drawings I rejected. I’ll save them for another piece another day.

I could push through. All the elements are there. But the experiment failed. I took similar elements, and they did not create the same energy.

I could blame it on the weaker drawing. That would be fair. But I suspect that the energy of the piece itself is different, and probably can’t be reproduced.

Will I throw it out? Heaven’s no! I can always use an extra fish. This one just doesn’t belong here.

So, as a rest, I’m back to octopuses. The fish piece is on the wall, aging like fine wine. It will find its time.

Fallow time seems to be an important part of the process as well. Repeating the same elements doesn’t always create the same energy. The parts just aren’t the sum of the whole.

Again? Really? Yes. Really.

| ellenanneeddy

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.

What Makes A Series?

| ellenanneeddy

Series really almost always just happen. You make one fish quilt and suddenly there are six fish quilts. Since you’re working them within a reasonable time of each other, their techniques tend blend in with each other. Instant series.

Series are about obsessions. They’re about images you just can’t let go of. For some reason or other you’re compelled to work an image over and over again, until something settles within you and says you’ve done enough.

But every so often, you choose to make a series. That can be for many reasons. If you’re not compelled by the images you are about to die of boredom But if you’re compelled, you know what you’re doing for the next three to six months. Series are exciting because they get to answer the what-if questions.

I spoke with a gallery that expressed an interest in a show. It’s a smaller gallery, and it made me think of Monet’s Orengaria

For those of you unfamiliar, here’s a short history

The Water Lilies by Claude Monet

“History of the Water Lilies cycle

Offered to the French State by the painter Claude Monet on the day that followed the Armistice of November 11, 1918 as a symbol for peace, the Water Lilies are installed according to plan at the Orangerie Museum in 1927, a few months after his death. This unique set, a true « Sixtine Chapel of Impressionism » in the words of André Masson in 1952, testifies to Monet’s later work. It was designed as a real environment and crowns the Water Lilies cycle begun nearly thirty years before. The set is one of the largest monumental achievements of early twentieth-century painting. “

What an astonishing thing, to have a circular space, filled with Monet’s waterlilies

Monet is really the poster boy for series. His waterlilies illuminated his whole life. He painted many other things, but when I think of Monet, I think of waterlilies in the pond

Not to agrandize myself, but this little gallery would offer a chance to do an in the round kind of show experience.

Lately I’ve had a fascination with octopuses. My passions in images have to do with movement. So much of my life I’ve been constrained with a body that just doesn’t move as well as it might, I’m fascinated by the movement of creatures who are not resrrained. Nothing can move like an octopus. They also change color. I don’t know if some of the pictures I’ve been looking at are ai or not. I’m playing. They can just be wild. Why not put them in a gallery in the round?

Here are my two prior octopus quilts. I think they’re a good start

So here are my drawings for the series. There might be more. I’m not sure if they are three quilts or four. I’ll know when they’re embroidered.

So we have one octopus mostly embroidered. I’ll keep you posted as I work up the others. Encircled by octopuses. Sounds pretty wild.

Thanksgiving: A Pause

| ellenanneeddy

Between the cooking of birds and a small blizzard, we’ve had a pause in the world.. Don spent yesterday napping, I believe. I don’t know because I binged watched most of the extended Hobbit with Tolkein, my cat, and started a new sweater. Not what we normally do.

This was not a year for travel. Time and space have not cooperated. But it doesn’t mean that I felt people were distant. How did I manage to make friendships that have lasted 30 years, 40 years? How did that happen?

When we all could travel easier, many of us made friendsgiving, the day after thanksgiving. Now our bodies just aren’t cooperating. But strangely I felt everyone there. Don and I are only kids. We’re both, thankfully considering our parents, orphens. But we have family, rich and strong and very much loved. Thank you all.

Speaking of parents, my father fished as a religion. It was where he found peace, rest, calm and joy. I’ve never wanted to catch a fish in my life, but he took me in his small row boat, and immersed me in that world. Part of me has never left. When I stitch fish, I’m revisiting it. I offer it to you.

I spent the week batching luna moths for my cranes. I’m not sure whether they sit on the coast or not, but they’d be in the adjascent swamp land.

I love batch embroidery. It’s coloring in the zone. I use it for most of the small to medium elements in my quilts. So much can be done with small fish, flowers, frogs, birds, lizards, and anything else you can think of. I always make too many. It’s sort of like too much bacon. How could that happen? And of course, I can always think of a use for another fish or strip of bacon. Many pieces need a left over elements, just to round it out.

Batching elements helps me build a body of things to incorporate into a quilt to make it more love, to make it move, to make it flow.

It may be too much. This is the first pin up. They always shift by the time I get the water in and make adjustments. I think it needs rocks to ground it.

But who wouldn’t follow a path of lunar moths?

Filling in: Designing a Pathway

| ellenanneeddy

I’ve been working on this piece for a while. And then I’ve needed to let it sit.

Partially, I was waiting for weed stencils I could turn into rubbing plates. They came from Temu. and took forever. But I’m pleased with them. I want more, higher up on the right side.

Now we come to the tricky part. We have a blank space on the left hand side. You don’t have fish or frogs in surf. Maybe butterflies by the shore. I think rocks would be understated and wrong. What will I use to fill in?

Usually I know my options pretty well. I work a lot with grasslands and swamps, rivers, and ponds. Ocean shores, not so much. I’m not sure what is on the beach except for horseflies. Somehow, that’s not what I wanted.

Google didn’t help either. I looked up coastal insects and got lots of information about pest control. I was hoping for pretty pest control subjects. They did mention some pretty moths.

This is a moment I’m glad I’m a bibiloholic. I have in a series of books, Florida’s Fabulous insects. I have a terrible urge to use a lunar moth I already embroidered. IT worked pretty well. Moving moths could set the path for the eye through the quilt. When I looked it up, luna moths are down there.

So I drew out a series of luna moths. It’s more than this piece needs, but there is no such thing as a luna moth I won’t eventually use.

Design is a process. Solve one part of the puzzle, move to another part. Waiting is also part of the process. I find pieces grow into themselves rather than follow a design I had in mind.

Understanding Quilted Textures: Layering for Stunning Effects

| ellenanneeddy

Most quilters think in terms of one surface. You make a top. You quilt a top. It works for the traditional quilt.

It’s never worked for me. If you’re creating a natural world, one layer seems, well, flat. Layers change tones across a piece, build texture, create shading, and add elements that are present but not solid. They can be made from fabric layers, thread layers, and sheer layers.

I also have a layer of image embroidery which is a separate thing.

Hand dye is always my starting layer. Even now when it’s become a pain in the ass to dye, I still don’t want anyone’s fabric for my art but my own. It’s unique one piece to another and if you let it, it will tell you what to do. Who doesn’t need a leg up?

This last month I’ve added another possibility. I can have an oil paint stick rubbing layer that adds substance as well as texture.

Because I can make the rubbing plates I need. I’ve used rubbings for all kinds of things, but mostly, the commercia; plates are best for texture. Oil paint stick rubbing is not exactly transparent, but it does show the background through.

On this piece I wanted trees, water, and reflected trees. I wanted the actual trees to be more present, so I stitched them straight stitch with brown, black and blue.

The reflected trees and the water texture I simply let be. It feels, mirkier, wetter and more like water surface.

I have a beginning layer of sheer shapes for water under my fish.

After I’ve stitched down my fish, the second layer of sheers places them in the water.

A stippled thread layer of Madeiera Metallic colorizes the air portion and makes it shimmer.

A stipple layer of Sliver thread makes the water splash and shine.

Finally a layer of leaves defines the surface of the water.

My goal was to create three worlds, the pond, the surface and the air. I think I’ve got it.

Layers add texture, density and complexity to what I do.

Rubbing Elementals: Using Oil Paint Stick Rubbing to Create Water, Air, Mist and Trees

| ellenanneeddy

What are elementals? They’re not the subject or the background. They are layers of sheers usually that create the ilusion of air, water, clouds, fire. Things that are usually translucent or transparent. They change color and texture within the piece without being obtrusive. Usually they have no hard edges. Instead, we see through them, but they help create the illusion of those elements by shifting the colors.

I put in my elementals directly after I’ve chosen my background and finished embroidering my subject.

Up until now, I’ve made my elementals out of sheers, lace, hand painted lace, and dyed cheesecloth. I love those. But I always want more options.

Since I’ve been able to make my own rubbing plates, I’ve had options to create that layered effect. Most rubbing plates create texture or give you a subject. The ones I made with stencils are created to make trees, clouds, waves and waters. Why does rubbed fabric work for that? It has soft edges, It blends into colors, and you can layer your rubbings just like layers of sheers..

beginning background
embroidered fish

I’m very pleased with the background and the fish. But I wanted the feeling of reflected trees and pond surface.

Fish placed in background rubbed with tree images and water reflectons. Rocks added.

The water and the reflected trees add a hazy elemental layer. What now? I’m unsure. I think it needs a layer of sheer waters as well.

Layers suit water. If you’ve ever walked into a pond, you can feel the layers of water, warmer or colder. It makes sense in fabric as well. I’m hoping to create three worlds, the bottom of the pond, the surface of the water, and the bare trees above the surface. Time to get out the silk leaves and organza.