Month: December 2020

Winterfair Gifts: Possibility out of Darkness

| ellenanneeddy

We didn’t really do Christmas this year. We didn’t have money for presents. A tree seemed like far too much work, given that walking from the chair to the kitchen is a five minute trial. Dear friends will need to understand some packages will arrive possibly later than Epiphany. They know about that.

Don is fixing my old computer to be my new computer with some new parts and that frees up a new computer for him. It sounds much worse than it is. Both of us lack nothing for stuff. Merry Christmas!

Sarah and Donna Hinman sent me calamity ware mugs and a teapot that have me over the moon. They have dinosaurs, monsters, Sasquash, and zombie poodles! Merry Christmas indeed!

936 Swoop Dive

All of the really big gifts in our lives, a love, a job, a passion, a pet, a child, a studio, are invitations to be something different ourselves. A love teaches you how to be a lover. A pet or a child teaches you how to love someone or something past it’s problems and messes. A studio, well a studio teaches you how to dance with your creation.

For those of you who don’t know, Don gave me his house as my studio last year. I have never had a gift like a studio. The space to do what we do without interruption or criticism is a place to practice art. And with art, we never really do anything but practice, one phase into another. Art is a byproduct. What we create in a studio is skill and vision. Thank you, Don! Merry Christmas!

Real gifts change us. And I have been give some of the best. Here is a bit of what I did this year, in my studio.

I hope Christmas brought you gifts that change you, help you grow, help you see your world differently. And make us all so much richer in ability, in who we are and what we have to give.

The Miracle of Cheesecloth: Not Just for Turkey Anymore

| ellenanneeddy

I love sheers! I love the ability to have my background peak through the sheers to create the connection between background and an object.

But most sheers don’t paint or dye well. They are poly or nylon. They come in bright colors, but they have other problems. You can paint them in pastels. They don’t dye with fiber reactive dyes at all. And if you get your iron temperature wrong, they melt.

But cheesecloth does all that well! It’s all cotton, and woven loosely. And you can iron it on fry and it behaves like cotton.

You know cheesecloth. You just aren’t used to it in the sewing room. It’s an airy woven cotton people used to use to make cheese (hence the name). Or on turkies to keep the breast moist. You may have used it to make Halloween ghosts or Christmas angels.

But dyed, it can be any color in the universe. I include it in a regular dye batch and it dyes like a champ with fiber reactive dyes. And it washes out easily in your regular washer in a nylon lingerie bag.

It makes amazing leaves! The weave in the cheesecloth looks like the cells of the leaves and the stitching defines the color.

My favorite thing to do with cheesecloth is to make mushrooms. Child of the 60s that I am, they are a flora that fascinates me. And they are an excuse for eye popping color.

I do make them in batches. I’ll line up a set of mushrooms on a piece of felt, using Steam a Seam 2, pull out my brightest polyester embroidery thread and stitch up batches of mushrooms at a time, that I’ll use in many different quilts. The bright colors and zigzag stitch pop the the colors to a peak intensity. Now, who doesn’t want that?

What I did differently, is I made some smaller ones for pins and patches for my friend, Sherrill Newman who owns the South Shore Market in Porter, Indiana.

South Shor Market in Porter IN

I almost never make these available to people except as finished quilts. But she talked me into it. I made a small batch for her store. Some of the left overs I’ve put on sale on Etsy. They have pins backs on them, but if you wished to use them as a patch, it would be a matter of a moment to remove that with a seam ripper.

Hand dyed cheesecloth might just be the sheer you’ve been longing for. Bright, cotton, and beautifully texturized, it makes great flowers, leaves and ‘shrooms.

Rethinking White: Another Approach to Thread Color

| ellenanneeddy

It would be nice if color were formulaic. Unfortunately it’s just not. Color is complicated, and thread color is even more so. How do we pick thread colors to create a flower shade? And what do we do if we want to create white?

White has it’s own complications. It’s a flashlight on a quilt. If you put on real white it’s intense. It blinds you to darker details. So often bright white is just too much.

It’s also boring. It needs shading and definition. Flat white is, well, flat.

I wanted some white clematis for a quilt.

The first question that I ask is what color is my light, How do I know what color my light is? My light is the color of my fabric. In this case my fabric is full of blue light. So my light is blue. I then imagine my flowers dusted with blue light.

I chose to use metallics for this because of their translucency. The sheers will also be translucent which adds to the feeling of them being flower petals. That being said, I decided white, silver, and grey threads white just for contrast. But if I were going to add a color for shading, blue was a good bet. The gold and purple gold were contrasts for the center swirls. And there is always room for lime green. It adds excitement without having a high color impact.

My other secret weapon I used was sheers. There are at least a dozen sheers I cut into petal shapes and fused on to blue felt, with tear away stabilizer behind it. The difference in the sheers make differences in each petal.

Using a different thread on each side of the petal creates shadows. Putting a crease through the petal in green and gold increases the illusion.

Here is the bank of them embroidered on the felt.

Here they are cut way. White is only one of the dozen threads I used, but my flowers are still white .

Here they are cut out on the background. There will be leaves and moths, but its a start.

So when you are thinking about thread colors, think about your light. Go both lighter and darker in your thread color for shadows and highlights. And if all fails, add lime green.

Eyesoars: Color as an Antidepressant

| ellenanneeddy

Why do we do art? Why did cavemen paint bisons in caves? Why do we feel a need to decorate, to beautify, to make things ornate> I can’t really speak for the human race. For myself, I’m restructuring my world. By the time I’ve played with my images, it changes how I view my world. I am changed, whether I can change my world or not.

949 Floral Arrangement 25

This last week was a bit of a roller coaster for me. I was supposed to have surgery last week on my knee that’s gone bad. After a roll call of more tests, I found I will have to wait for January for the prerequisite tests.

I have a no whine on line rule generally. Finding out I get to wait while my knee degenerates has left me belly low. I’ve gone through denial, doubt, fear, anger and have finally landed in that mud puddle of depression.

So this week I went into the studio, got out the most eye popping threads in my drawer. I pulled out the oranges, purples, yellows and greens and made the wildest flower I could. I’m told that Zinnias are called eyesores in Mexico. But what a way to make your eye soar!

Did it help? Yes. Yes it did. There’s something about yellow, orange, purple, red and green as a combination that lifts my heart. And it changes me.

So I’m making a pile of mushrooms. What better excuse for a riot of color? And yes, it makes me feel better. Perhaps I just needed more fiber in my diet.

Body Blocked: And Now for Something Completely Different

| ellenanneeddy
With Friends in the studio

I finished four quilts this week. Partially for the joy of it, Partially to fill the time.

  • Swirling Leaves
  • Butterfly Pond
  • Ginko Butterfly
  • Heron Pond
  • Heron Pond Detail

My body is betraying me. I have an infection in my replaced knee and we’re going to have to clean it out, let it heal and replace the knee. It’s a three month process.

Can I quilt? I don’t know. The question is, can I walk into the car and the studio. We’ll find out. We don’t know.

I hate the words, ‘We don’t know.’

What I know is that time forced away from your creative flow doesn’t stop it. It finds a way. Through quilts, through words, through my hands, through my dreams, through my prayers.

We came back from the surgeon who told us that instead of doing surgery now, we need to wait until January 19th. More we don’t know. And waiting for the covid vaccine.

If you’re a praying person pray. If not spare me a good thought. I guess the first trial is the wait. Thanks!