textile art

Codifying Your work: Making Your Own Rules

| ellenanneeddy

Yesterday I gave a lecture on the Visual Path at the Peoria Art Guild. The best thing about lectures is that they help you think about what you do without thinking. I know that a major component of my design decisions is largely about making work move. Lectures give you a reason to think it through so you can talk about it.

Every artist has conundrums they are trying to solve within their work. For myself, making movement is one of those. If I’m filling the world with images of birds, bugs, lizards and frogs, I would hope that they would be breathing, living, moving birds, lizards and bugs. So how do I do that?

Here’s a section of my lecture with some of the rules I’ve decided help me.

These rules may seem silly or simple. But I use them every day. If I want to make things move, I can tilt them, change the size dimensions, create the illusion that they’re falling, or put them in a progressively larger or smaller conga line. All of those are cheap tricks. But they work.

That got me thinking, how many artists have rules they’ve made for themselves that help them to do what they want with their art? And what happens when we break those rules? Are we reminded why we thought to do that in the first place? Or are we liberated by realizing that rule isn’t all that ironclad?

The very cool thing about all this is that no one gets to apply those rules to us as artists except ourselves. It’s not so much a box we’re stuck in as a useful gridwork we can choose to use, or not.

My visual path pieces always make me think about how to make my eye travel through my whole quilt, just for fun. So if I were to bend my rules a bit, what would that look like? Each quilt is an answer to a question that I haven’t figured out just yet.

Peoria Art Guild 

Natural Threads Ellen Anne Eddy Show September 1-28

Peoria Art Guild, 203 Harrison St, Peoria, IL, 61602, 309 637 2787 

Hours: Monday 9-4, Tuesday 9-6:30, Wednesday 9-6:30, Thursday 9-6:30, Friday 9-4 Saturday 9-2, Sunday CLOSED

The Art of Documenting Your Art: How to KEep Track of Your Work

| ellenanneeddy

Today we take 16 quilts over to the Peoria Art Guild to hang the show opening next Friday night, Sept. 1st. In the rush to finish a couple more pieces, find all the unlabeled work, and get all the hangings on, the rods cut, and the cat fur off, there’s a final task that has to happen. I need to do my documentation.

There are 1,107 quilts on my price list since the 1980s. There are around 200 quilts in house. I’m not good at keeping track. I regularly find I’ve got a piece at a gallery I thought I’d lost. I don’t even panic anymore. The chances are excellent that the missing piece is safe in a store where I left it, coming home in time.

But I do have some documentation tricks that help.

photos, photos, Photos

Take full and detailed shots of your work, without Fido in the background. It helps to take process shots too.

Everything Has a Number

Each piece has a number of its own. Its number is the next sequence, plus the year it was made. That gets documented in an Excel file that has the size, and price of each quilt.

The price list is the listing for each quilt by number.

Everything has a Signature

I always sign my work. Right in the stippling. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes it’s not. But it’s always there. Yes, I can sign it backwards in case I have the cool thread in the bobbin.

Everything Has a Label

I’ve done everything for labels at one time or another: written in pen on the back, or stitched on a computerized machine. Now I run them through the computer. I use June Tailor’s Iron on Quick Fuse Fabric, an ink jet printer, and Avery’s free label printing site. I can print a sheet full of any kind of label I want and cut it out with a rotary cutter.

1-large-quilt-labels-b7-24Download

Labels are a safety feature. How does anyone know it’s your quilt if you don’t label it? I have a recognizable style, but it’s hubris to pretend everyone would know. Telling one quilt from another on a price list can be harder than it looks. And it has my contact information so someone can send it back to me or contact me if they should find it. I don’t send quilts out without a label.

So how do I manage to lose quilts? I’m so tired at the end of this I don’t always mark off when something sells or when it goes somewhere. The best system is subject to human error, and boy, am I human.

These are some quilts that just came home. They’re on my Etsy site on sale.

The opening for the Peoria Guild Show is at:

Peoria Art Guild 

Natural Threads Ellen Anne Eddy Show September 1-28

Peoria Art Guild, 203 Harrison St, Peoria, IL, 61602, 309 637 2787 

Hours: Monday 9-4, Tuesday 9-6:30, Wednesday 9-6:30, Thursday 9-6:30, Friday 9-4 Saturday 9-2, Sunday CLOSED

Rethinking Cut-Away Applique

| ellenanneeddy

Most of the time when I applique fabric, I use a fusible like Steam a Seam 2 and I cut out my shapes. Except when I don’t.

Cut out applique works well for smaller, stable pieces that can be cut and moved around. Cut-away applique is better for elegant curved lines you just can’t cut out and move around..They shim out of shape too easily. And then they never lie flat.

Direct Applique

  • Attach a layer of fusible to the applique
  • Cut out the object before you glue
  • Stitch down free motion zigzag
  • 1 step process, just stitch it on
  • Thicker lines

Cut- away Applique

  • No fusible glue
  • Lay down a sheet of applique fabric
  • Straigh stitch in the design on top
  • Cut it away excess fabric
  • Stitch it down free motion zigzag
  • 2 step process
  • Softer, smoother lines

For this frog, I wanted a sinuous curved vine with curlicue tendrils. Not something that is easily done in direct applique. Larger cut-away applications can distort a bit. If we put a layer of the applique fabric over the top, stitch it down and cut it away, it’s a much cleaner, smoother line.

In cut-away applique, we stitch the design on an extra layer, and then cut-away what the excess.

Then we stitch down the edge with a free-motion zigzag stitch that can be smooth and lyrical like the design itself.

Here is the cutout vine ready for applique. What has changed? I used to draw and cut the leaves as well. I’ve done those separately to avoid some of the distortion.

Cut-away applique with Lace

The same process works with these lace butterflies. Rather than glue them on, and have the glue show through, I stitched around them straight stitch and then cut away the excess fabric. I had though I was adding butterflies, but I think they look more like the shadows of butterflies, which is much more cool.

Cut-away works as well with lace. These butterflies were part of a lace fabric. I stitched down the leaves and bugs, cut away the background, and stitched down the lace with a small free-motion zigzag stitch.

These techniques are neither right or wrong. It’s about using different techniques to get the results you want. It’s all a part of your tool box, for you to use as you want.

What happened Here?: Keeping Process Shots

| ellenanneeddy

But the other side of that, at the end of the studio day, you have you, your phone, and whatever happened that day. It’s a natural thing to take some pictures. And in the end of that, you’ve got a record of what happened here.

This is another story about technology. Most of us have come to that moment where your phone is your camera. It took me awhile. First off, they needed to be good enough to be your camera. They’ve been that for a while.

But if your camera is always there, you can always use it. Recently I got a new-to-me Iphone 12 Mini. Apple hasn’t continued a line of mini phones, but for me, they’re ideal. My hands are small and I really can’t hold on to a big phone. But the camera is just as good as you could ask. My latest book, Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book, was completely shot with my phone.

I post these in a regular way on my business Facebook page, in albums, because it’s fun for you to see, and it’s good for me to keep track of.I also regularly put some of them in my blog as I talk about my work. But my other reason is that I think it’s really important to have these for the owner of the quilt. Lately, I’ve been sending those photos with the quilts when I sell them. It’s their baby. They should have baby pictures.

I hope you keep pictures of your work on a daily basis. It’s good documentation. Your phone is right there. Use it.

You’ll find the process shots for many of my quilts on my business Facebook page.

The Long and the Short of It: Blending Stitches with the Long Stitch

| ellenanneeddy

We’ve been talking about the variability of the zigzag stitch in free motion. Most of the time, I’m filling in a space where I want a line of color to show up. This is a trick that will give me a soft blend of color across the image without a hard line. I’ve heard it called the long stitch, although the old-fashioned description you hear with free motioners is the long short stitch. As with all free-motion zigzag stitching, the difference isn’t a setting on the machine. It’s how you move your fabric through the machine as you’re stitching.

Most of the time when I’m filling a space, I stitch a zigzag line at an angle around the edge, I shade the piece by stitching from side to side, and then I smooth the edges with a zigzag that moves straight through.

But when you just move from side to side you get a long blending stitch that flows into itself. The breast of the bird is done from side to side. The feathers are done with an outline, shading, and smoothing. You can see the difference.

You can find more information about the angle of stitching in the Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book or this post, Stitch Vocabulary: Zigzag Stitch.

The Variable Garnet Stitch: Building Texture

| ellenanneeddy

Last week’s octopi are growing. And the stitch to use for anything as lumpy and bumpy as an octopus is the garnet stitch. The fun thing is how many variations there are.

Reviewing Garnet Stitch

Garnet stitch is not a stitch on your machine. It’s working free-motion and moving your hands in circles. You can make all kinds of circles or half circles to different affect. It works either straight stitch or zigzag. It sounds simple.

It’s defined by how fast you move your hands, how large your circles are, and whether you let them overlap or not. The range of effects you can get is stunning. Visually it stands out like nothing else.

zoning

The first thing you do with a project such as this is zone it. Usually, I zone for color. With this project, I’ve zoned for texture as well. For working purposes, I marked the tentacles dark and light, since that was a major concern. Light tentacles are sucker side up. The suckers are different from the main surface, which is different from the eyes, and also different from the skin between the suckers and the main surface. The colors slide through a range between a bottle green and bright yellow, with blue and purple streaks. Nothing subtle here. But zoning my drawing helps me to know where my colors and textures need to be.

The suckers are a bull’s eye garnet stitch: dense stitching in a complete circle with no overlap, There’s a small rim garnet stitch in purple to punch out the suckers.

The general skin is an overlapping loose zigzag with layers of color on it. I’ve topped it off with a seed stitch to make it truly lumpy.

There’s a ridge over the edge where the suckers meet the main skin. I put a red violet edge of garnet stitch overlapping on one side to build the ruffle on.

The suckers seen from the side and the ruffle are pure zigzag stitching.

Finally, I stitched a large seed stitch across the skin to get that lumpy bumpy look.

Octopi are made for garnet stitch! Next week, jellyfish.

New Quilts on Sale: Just in Time for Mother’s Day

| ellenanneeddy

I just finished a new batch of smaller quilts and put them on sale on my Etsy shop! 15% off until May 22. Just in time for Mother’s Day.

And in case, upi can have one for yourself.

Quilts on sale now! Etsy Shop

The Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book is Ready to Order

| ellenanneeddy

The Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book is available to order in print!

This classroom book takes you through all the techniques I use to create my art in 5 easy exercises on 9″ squares. Then you take those exercises and bind them into your own reference book, there to remind you what works best for you.

I love classroom books. I think it’s important to give people the whole recipe for something, with nothing left out. That’s what I tried to do here.

It includes free motion techniques on straight stitch, zigzag, bobbin work, hard edge applique, soft edge applique, rocks, Angelina fiber, globbing, couching, silk flowers and leaves, and all machine binding.

If you are taking the class at Gems of the Prairie, your book is part of your class fee and will be waiting for you at class. For everyone else, you can order it now on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/…/173228…/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0…

Wringer Washer Woes and Wonders

| ellenanneeddy
Don with Frank

I’ve talked before about using old-fashioned appliances for dyeing. They are hidden gems for dyers! They are made especially for cotton and other plant fibers and work brilliantly in processing cotton.

Now that I’m no longer constantly on the road, I don’t dye as much as I used to. I used to dye around 50 yards of fabric a month. Now I dye around 20 per three months. It’s usually for my own use now, although I make some available in my Etsy shop, and you can always call me up and pick out the fabric you’d like on Zoom or Messenger.

But 50 yards or 20, that’s a lot of fabric to wrangle around. I’ve written about mangles. They are awesome ironing tools. But the other ancient appliance I depend on is a wringer washer.

Am I washing out with it? Ah, no. Cotton has to be soaked in solution and then wrung out. I don’t quite have the space even in a full kitchen dye space to wrangle 20 yards in the sink. Enter, the wringer washer. It will hold ample washing soda solution and fabric, and then wring your fabric out for you.

Unfortunately, like most appliances from the 40s and 50s, they’re a little old and cranky by now. When my beloved Maytag started to smoke, it was old enough to put in for social security as well as vote. We went hunting another wringer washer.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Most of the ones out there have retired to being lawn ornaments. We found one that looked like it was in good shape except for the rust and the fact that it wasn’t moving when we plugged it in. A parts machine, as Don put it.

It seemed like an easy thing to fix. Maytag made the same wringer washer for around 40 years. These washers were 20 years apart, but almost identical. But we needed to meld them into Frankenwasher! A it of this, a bit of that, put together.

We come to our heros of this adventure. I called around Galesburg, looking for someone who might help us with the frankenwasher project. I got a resounding no. No one had wringer washers. No one knew how to fix a wringer washer. No one would want one, would they?

Until I called Dillons Appliance. I love mom and pop stores. I got Sam who knew is father, Jack, used to work on them.. Jack talked his grandson, Jackson through it. And Jackson, who is a brilliant young mechanic, learned from his grandfather how to fix a wringer washer. IT LIVES!

So the moral of the story is don’t let anyone tell you no. All they are telling you is that they can’t help. Keep going till you find someone who says yes.

And find the really good mom and pop businesses that do say yes, because they are treasures, not only because they are willing to help, but because they have wells of knowledge others may have forgotten, and are there for you.

Do check out Dillons if you need an appliance in Galesburg. Frank and Frankson are my heros.

 343 S Chambers St. Galesburg, IL 61401. ยท (309) 343-0476. 

The other hero of all of this is Don, who is willing to drive all over the countryside searching for ancient appliances and his friend Joe who has moved more appliances with Don than I can count. Did I tell you I’m a lucky girl?