I have just risen triumphant over my vacuum cleaner again.Those who know me know there is a ritual vacuum cleaning in my house once every seven years, if needed. It’s not quite that bad but close. I have to have a task I really don’t want to do do get around to vacuuming first. Say like cleaning out the basement cat pottie. Digging out the 85 rogue dock plants on the side yard. Finding what really is in the refrigerator.
I got all the dogs into the yard to avoid attack mode on either side. And turned it on.
The noise was astonishing. The response, not so much. The little tornado inside simply didn’t step up. So I turned it on its head and went about a game called “What’s your mechanical perversion?” Usually that’s a one to five minute round exercise.
Not this time. It didn’t take long to discover the cloth bedroom slipper stuck in the rotor. Pulled that out. Fired it up. More non-action.
So we attacked with a screw driver to find the busted belt and there is was. A trip off to the store and back, belt in my pocket. Got the belt on and still no action.
So as a final act, I took the broom handle out for a walk and jammed it up the hose. All the way.
Out popped an odd and awful thing that I think once was a chunk of wood. It’s now sucking in a much more acceptable way.
The point to all of this is that it ought to easier. Sometimes it simply isn’t. It isn’t like there’s a simple fix. There’s the round after round of hits and answers to those hits that in themselves should be small, but as a group, they’re devastating. And one fix alone won’t do it.
I’ve just had this happen in a medical way as well. Two months ago I ended up briefly in the hospital for what looked like a heart attack. It turns out I have massive high blood pressure which can easily be medically controlled. But, because of the medical systems in place, my only option to discover this was an emergency room visit and an overnight hospitalization.
I’m healing and my meds are regularized. But the financial consequences are overwhelming. I’m in the process of negotiating that, but in that economy it may still be career ending. As a working person with a small amount of money, there is no chance of medical monetary aid. As a single self employed person there is no way to purchase meaningful insurance. I am uninsured and pretty sure that the hospital will demand what I have, even if it impoverishes me and takes my studio.
So, like the vacuum cleaner, I have a few simple tools. I am still able to teach and am delighted to continue that. It’s been my life. I hope it continues to be my life. If your guild, group or store would like me to teach, that would be wonderful. You’ll a find a complete list of classes on my site and a full class catalog on on scribd.com
I have a mountain of fabric that I’ve collected over the years. I’m going to begin to destash, and I invite you to Raid My Fabric Stash, a new Etsy store started by my truly desperate self. And remind you that I have the mother of all stash of sheers, hand dyes, and other wonders. I invite you to raid my stash. We’ll have new offerings up every week. We’re starting with some fabric/fiber inspiration kits. More will be coming soon.
If you’ve ever wanted a quilt of mine, this is the time. Check the web site, see if there’s a piece you would like and contact me directly. I can offer a 30-50% discount depending on the piece. Call me and we’ll make that happen. I’ll also list some pieces on the Etsy site just to see what happens.
It really should be easier. But it’s not. I don’t like to ask for help. But I’m trying every way I can, to figure my answers out.
I’m obsessed with color studies. Of course, my favorite present, even as a child was a color chart. I still feel that way. But what I’ve found over the years is that it’s the relationships between the colors that set my heart pitter pattering.
Once you get past the physicality of how you do your art or craft, you find yourself needing to expand somehow. Usually that takes a question. What if? How? Why do we always? Most great or even mildy interesting art asks a question and works through the answers. You can see artists of all kinds ask questions. What if it were really bigger? Upside down? My dream view? My nightmare? Blue instead of yellow? All of that changes our perspective on what we’re doing. And I think, personally, that the change of perspective may be the basic reason for it all. If we see our world as different, then it is. If we can get someone else to see the world differently, then we’ve really changed them at least.
The hard and exhausting thing about this is that often it takes years of work to ask and answer those questions within your work. Sometimes that’s worth it. Sometimes it’s a way to avoid doing anything important while you play in a corner.
Peonies in my garden
Enter the computer age. Instant spelling, communication and in some ways, instant art. One of the coolest tools on the computer is the computer program Photoshop. Even in it’s lighter versions, it’s the go to program for digital Phototography. It’s a golden oldy. I don’t know anyone who knows Photoshop. But I’ve been learning what I call tricks with Photoshop. Within it is an endless set of tools to manipulate color and shape. Sound like anything we know? As I’ve worked on books for myself and others I’ve needed to know more than just how to size my pictures.
So I’ve been taking classes on Lynda.com, which is a tutorial service on the internet that offers a mind boggling range of videos on anything you might want to learn. This is what happened when they showed me the slider bar on the hue menu. I’m not going to show you how to do this, because it’s simply sliding the bar around. I want you to see what happens to colors when we change the hue, but the relationships stay the same. And it does an instant abstract just by being colors you don’t expect.
Remember that peoni?
Peonies in my garden
I could have spent the last 6 months making this peonie in these colors. It might have been worth it to me. I still may. But I got to see the changes without that time spent. I picked the colors directly from the photographs rather than matching them to the wheel. The orange and lime ones are the ones that send me moonward. But then again, I’m always ready for orange and lime. But it’s the relationships that stay pretty constant. What would happen if I did that to the same bug?
I’m not sure if I learn as much this way, but it seems that I do. I don’t think we know exactly how it works to learn something intellectually and visually, but not through the manipulation of materials. But it’s six months of experimenting in 20 minutes. That was worth it.
Howard Schatz wrote an amazing book called Botanica, which I believe are a number of photoshop like images slid through different color waves. It’s mind blowing and very good for getting you out of the notion that roses are red and violets are blue.
Lynda.com is also mind blowing. I invite you to check it out and see what neat thing you can learn today.
My garden has gone bersonkers. Perhaps it’s all that rain. Or my friends who morris dance in it from time to time. One of the things I enjoy most is the cycle of change measured by my flowers. The garden starts as yellow daffs, goes through a multicolor, but mostly red tulip phase, and then lands in the purple part of May/June
This is the time of peonies and alliums.
I have regular peonies. But they take a back seat to the Chinese peonie trees I put in years ago. They stand as a tree and have spectacular 6-8 inch blooms in pinks, purples and reds.
Alliums are a huge purple garlic bloom. How could you go wrong? Add another color peonies and the garden starts to sing in purple.
Why is it so exciting? A look at the color wheel makes it plain. We”re playing with complements again. But on top of that we have colors on either side. So we have an analogous color combination as well. The colors make a split analogous grouping which really is my favorite way to play. You get all the smooth colors from an analogous color arc and the excitement of a complement group.
Remember that the color wheel is not just about mixing color. It’s not just red and blue make purple. Instead, it’s a mapping of color relationships. We respond to the relationships of color, who they are next to each other, much more than we respond to one color or another separately. And we can spin the dial to create to reproduce that relationship with another set of colors entirely.
Next time I’ll take you for a spin on the color wheel using Photoshop as our guide.
Wanting to build your own pattern free quilt garden? Check out my book
One of the horrors of growing up a teacher’s child is that everyone expects you to be good at things. And to be good. Good luck!
I made a best effort try over the years being a goody two shoes mixed with just a bit of a smart Alec. But I never could write or spell. At all. My spelling was practically Shakespearean ( meaning any way it could be phonetically guessed at.)
I was in grad school studying dyslexia when I realized I was one. Is it a gift? Absolutely. It’s a born way to see the world differently. If you can actually show someone else a different world, they are richer by far. If you can show the world that, you can change it. I’ve taken far more joy from my dyslexia than sorrow. You just have to make it make sense to everyone else.
This does not mean it’s not a complete humiliation when you spell the world catalog incorrectly on the cover of your new catalog.
Enter the modern world.
Spell check! Online ( and therefore instantly correctable) publishing! And hopefully a forgiving world of people who know they hired you as a teacher and artist and not a English teacher.
My mother is surely rolling in her grave. But I hope the rest of you can celebrate this moment of creative dyslexia, corrected by some much appreciated modern science.
Everyone who teaches wants to find a way to show you all the cool classes they offer are.
I’ve taught for almost 30 years. And you would think that would be tired, but it’s like the old history joke. The history teacher is asked, “Did you change the test?” and he says “I don’t have to. The answers changed anyway.
The answers change as you teach. So do the questions. But the best question always is, ” What cool thing can I learn today?”
You also learn that people learn different ways. Do they want to make something? Learn a skill? Work on color theory? Work on design? Just do something silly for 3 hours? Create their masterpiece?
Over the years I’ve crafted classes to fill all those needs. Because I believe in teaching people where they really are and what they really need now. I’ve put together this catalog to help you figure out what you really want to learn and how you want to learn it.
So here’s a fun list of all the classes and lectures with all the materials, supplies, class outlines and available books.
There’s even a cool feature called the class finder.
Ask what you’d like to learn and how you’d like to learn it, and there’s a list of classes that will meet your needs.
I’ve done tutorials and on line sharing. But the truth is that nothing is like the synergy of a classroom where you’re energy and that of everyone in the room is focused on what we’re making today. I invite you to experience that by going to all kinds of classes. There’s nothing like the real thing.
I teach anywhere as long as my travel costs are covered. The way classes happen is if you ask your group for them. Please share this with your guild, favorite store, retreat or art center. Share their information with me. Tell them what you want to learn. I’ll see you on the road.
I remember the time I was in an airport and a man walked up to me and said, ” Happy Mother’s Day.” I almost told him I wasn’t a mother. But he was a total right. If it’s mother’s day, you best enjoy it.
Mothering is not exactly biology. It’s loving. It’s caring. It’s nudging into place. It’s standing in odd places to protect the people we care about. As the family has fallen apart, we have found other ways of being family. It’s just too hard to be alone. But the language hasn’t caught up yet. So in the way we had to redefine friends, lovers and spice, we came up with significant, we need to redefine the word mother . We don’t have the verbiage yet for other mom’s.
But God bless them all. My mother was screamingly funny, fiercely attached and deadly when she went on the rampage. She taught me to read poetry and quote it, social rules that were mostly socially unacceptable everywhere but in her head, how to do lectures and how to sell ice to Eskimos If you wanted warm and fuzzy, it wasn’t on the menu.
Enter my neighbor, Mary Annis who taught me to be late, messy, and honor my art. And who spilled love and crafts every where.
I’ve mothered (or maybe smothered) batches of children who have come through my doors. And batches of dogs and cats, all of whom needed a meal and a lap in a regular way.
Now my 13 year old neighbor has started mothering me. ” Did you lift your luggage”?
“No. I just tilted it” You know that didn’t work.
Perhaps one of the jobs of mothering is to give the people and creatures you love, something to push back against. To define you as you have your small rebellions, so that they don’t get so large as to put you in jeopardy. To remind you where safety is and that someone cares.
I hope you had dozens of mothers. I hope you have dozens of children that are yours to love. I hope they love you back. I hope we all learn how intertwined we are, in spite of a language that cannot define it.
Do listen to this bit of John Prine. It’s one of my favorites.
I’ve not been blogging for a while lately. I make it a practice not to tell a whiny story until I’ve figured out what’s funny about it. Not that I don’t whine. I just try really hard not to do it in public. There are time when I like my whine with cheese. But I do try to wait for the flip.
This time around I’m still waiting. So I really can’t tell you about the phantom squirrels in the studio ceiling. That’s coming soon. By the time they’ve been there 6 months and you’re having the discussion with the squirrel guy about whether they’re demonic or not and should you call the priest, I think that’s an indication. This should be cooked soon.
I’ve had some money issues that have piqued my interest in cooking spam for fun and profit because I don’t know that I’ll be able to afford much better. And some medical issues that are mostly resolved but have caused the money issues. I’m waiting for the flip.
What is the flip? It’s that moment when the world goes around. When the horrible and disgusting offerings that come round finally become funny. Or make us strong. Or different. Something.
So I’ve sat in silence trying to find my way out. Sometimes that’s strong. Sometimes that’s constipation. I can’t really tell.
I do know that there’s always a flip. Not the one you expect. Not the one you even hope for sometimes. But I came home to find someone ( I suspect my kind neighbors) have put up my porch screen and that Ezekiel the new dog has found his personal calling. It appears he can jump over his four foot xpen with the crate door shut. From a standing position. Which really begs the question, what can he do with a baby gate? Time will tell. The flip can’t be far away.
I’m going to go fight with numbers and take my anti-depressives. It’s a happy enchillada, as they say. And maybe we can flip it over, add chimmichanga sauce and serve it for lunch.
I’ve spent about a month sharing my series with you. Now I’m going to ask you to share yours.
So, what’s stopping you? Whatever media you work in, be it doodling on envelop backs or marble carving, you can stretch into a series, just like stretching into new jamies. It’s not hard.
If you’re waiting for the golden day when you paint your masterpiece, you’ll wait forever. Here is here and now is now. So take an idea, run with it, do it again and again, not in search of perfection but in search of new pathways, ideas and passions.
Here’s some ways to start working in a series
Take an image or an idea you’re passionate about.
Do it over and over again.
Change the angle.
Change the size.
Do it in primary colors.
Do it in black and white.
Do it in every color in the rainbow.
Do it in a color you really hate.
Do it upside down.
Get really close to your image.
Make your image really far away.
Do three of them in your piece.
Do five.
Make just pieces of your image.
Create your image. Cut it up and put it back together.
Do it in colors you don’t think go together. Make them go together.
Pick a complementary pair of colors on the color wheel that you love. Move it over two spots. Use those colors.
Draw it with really thick lines and no detail.
Draw it with tiny lines and immense detail.
Segment the image parts and color them differently.
Segment the image parts and color them so they shade progressively.
Put sheer layers over your image to put it in sunlight, water, or mist.
Try it in a brand new media
Try it in a media you tried before but didn’t work then.
Cut it instead of draw it
Draw it instead of cut it
I hope you’re getting the punchline. Draw, put, try, create, take, do, change: these are all action words. Do something to it. Do something different to it. The world is wide.
You all gave me the best ideas for a pattern book. It went places I hadn’t thought of and I am very grateful. This is not the pattern book I want to do that includes color clues and stitching advice. It is just an assist, to act as a springboard, if you wish. If you’d like a free copy, you can get your copy of Patterns for Embroidery, at scribd.com.
I’d also like to show you off. Would you like me to post your work on the Lunatic Fringe thread? Send me a series of 4 pieces of your work (any media) and a picture of yourself with a paragraph long art statement. Tell me how you’ve explored your series. I’ll post the ones I find most exciting on my site and link them to your web presence. If you gave me book advice please go to scribd for your free ebook. And thank you!
I’ll confess this. I really didn’t want to do patterns. I fought it tooth and nail.
Why? Because I believe something truly magical happens when you try to draw.
Three things I know:
Everything worth doing is worth doing badly. If you ever want to do anything well, you need to be willing to do it over and over again. Badly at first. You need to be willing to weather that through.
There’s no can’t like won’t. You really can’t do anything that you won’t do. Get over the won’t and then you really can. Particularly if you drop the need to be perfect.
You’re always better than you think. Once people get over the won’t thing and the perfection thing, usually their learning curve is pleasantly steep. But even if it isn’t, if you’re willing to try you can really, really, do anything.
I also thought it was lazy art. Then I ended up in a gallery with a show of Degas pastel tracings.
Degas Color Studies
I’m not Degas’ biggest fan, but he’s my idea of a completely respectable artist. He did brave explorations of art that was highly unacceptable in it’s time. And created an amazing body of work.
At one point he started tracing over his pictures and coloring them in different ways with pastels. I believe it was a color study. But no one can deny the beauty of them. He took the same image, over and over, to see where it might go.
With that being said, I’ve begun several years ago to bring patterns into class. And in the process, I’ve started using them myself, partially because it was part of demo and partially because it gives you a way to rework things in different ways. Again, another definition of series.
Owl’s Stream
Bugged
Fall Wise
What changed my mind? Well you pick your battles. If I have a lady in class, I’ve already made her work upside down and put weird thread in her machine. It’s sometimes time to cut a person some slack.
But it also speeds up the process. I will teach stick drawing for animals in class, but I only do it on request or when I’m doing master classes. Most people just want to go boogie on their machine. Sensibly enough. So I’ve consistently handed out a series of patterns from quilts of my own.
So what happens when you rework an image? All the other good series that happen
You get to ask, what if?
You remove some decisions so you can focus on others.
You speedline your work.
So with all that in mind I’m in the process of preparing a pattern book for students. You are the people I do this for. So would you be willing to let me know what you think?
Are you interested in a book of patterns drawn from my quilts?
What animals would you like to see in it?
Would you be willing to honor my request to use it strictly for classroom or personal use? (Not for contest or sales)
Would you want a disk to go with it of jpgs?
Would some other format work better for you?
Would you want a smaller number of patterns with full color insides or a larger black and white book?
Do you want advice and help in coloring and shading?
Do you want information about stitching or do you just want patterns?
Is there something else that would make this book more useful or desirable to you?
I learned a long time ago that I am not making books for me. They are always for you, fellow artists. So it helps to know, what would help. If you respond ( and leave your email), I’ll send you 6 patterns as a thank you.
You can either leave your comments on the page or email me at ellenanneeddy@gmail.com
Even though it’s unreasonably early, we expect a dragonfly sighting at Smith Owens Sewing Center in Grand Rapids. on February 23rd. You could even take one home!
Here’s the information on my class!
Ellen Ann Eddy is coming to Smith-Owen to teach her most popular class, Dragonfly Sky. It focuses on soft edge applique, angelina fiber, and bobbin work with fabulous thick threads.
Ellen Anne Eddy is an internationally known fiber artist whose wall art goes beyond the traditional concept of quilting, and now she is coming to teach you her specialty techniques using bobbin work, soft edge appliqué techniques and more.
Join us for this 6 hour workshop and leave with a beautiful finished wall art and the confidence to do more.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Time: 10:00 AM – 4PM Location: 4051 Plainfield NE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49525 Phone:616-361-5484800-383-3238
Smith Owen Sewing Center is a fabulous Viking/Pfaff store with a magnificent thread and fabric collection that has been a legend in Grand Rapids for years. Join me there for this very fun class day!
The best thing about working in series is that it’s fertile ground for all kinds of wonderful accidents. When you’re working on one idea, other ideas pop up. And best of all, there are left overs.
Now left overs for dinner are only as good as dinner itself. If they’re good their gold. If they’re not, it’s likely you’ll find them three weeks later in your fridge covered with light green growth. But when they’re great they lead to great discoveries. And when they’re fabric, they wait patiently for their time, without going moldy.
I’ve struggled for years to abstract my work. It’s not a natural thing for me. But while I was writing Thread Magic Garden, I quilted Butterfly Garden while I was exploring what made a lollipop flower (every child’s first flower) a recognizable flower. It’s either a saucer shape, a group of shapes circling a center or a bowl shape.
triangle flower
Star Flower
Drop Flower
Circle saucer Flower
Circle Bowl Flower
Petals in the Center
I had a left over. It reminded me of those great spring drop flowers like trout lilies and checkered fritillaria
So I put it into a green wet background with spring mist. I like this quilt but it’s not abstract. It’s fantasy.
What brought me into abstract, was breaking down into just petals. When I broke things down into their shapes, I was past just the flower. I made a pathway and put the petals on the path. Instead of making a specific flower, I’d made a shape that was past that.
So when I went to do Daylilies, I made C shapes that reminded me of dragon claws.
I put them into bunches that made my flowers and nailed the centers with an elegant spiral. Then I placed them along a pathway,
SAQA Journal just printed my story about Daylily Dance. It could never have happened if I weren’t working in a series, and following blindly where it went.
Thread Magic Garden
You’ll find all kinds of ideas for creating abstract and real fabric flowers in my book Thread Magic Garden. It’s not just my journey. It’s the beginning of yours.
You’ll find more about working in series on my blog at http://www.ellenanneeddy.com/weblog/
Watch for a special offer and a special gift this weekend!
Sometimes it’s an environment rather than an image.
I lived in Boston for three years. The best part of Boston was the ocean. I’m a Midwestern girl. I ‘d seen the ocean, in the way you see someone from across a huge room once. When I lived in Boston, I got to know it as a friend. I regularly went to the beach, looked over piers, sat at the harbor, and found myself in love.
Secret Garden was about an inappropriate love. Not anything truly wrong. Just terribly unworkable. The feelings were all there but there was no way to make them safe or kind.
Coral Sea
Flying fish are a happier image for me. I love their ability to glide through rough waters.
Crabby Days
Finally because there are those days, there are crabs.
The seasons pass through with different studio visitors. But my favorite are the summer visitors. If nothing else, they get to see the garden in bloom. Some of them consider it a ritual seasonal visit. They come year after year, for their pleasure, for my joy.
Homing Instinct detail
I especially love my hummingbird visitors. Actually he, and his wife, are both emerald green. But I dressed him up with a red head, just because I though he’d like to be formal for his portrait. Why do I know it’s a he? I didn’t look under his skirt. But if it’s a day glow bright bird, it’s a boy.
I was afraid I lost these visitors when my neighbors insisted I take down the day lily garden. They had come back year to year to those flowers, and I’d never seen them anywhere but in front in the day lily strip.
Floral Arrangement 24
Of course, if one buffet closes, you look around for what’s nearby. They found the back sun garden without any trouble the next year. I was delighted to watch their visit from the back planting rather than from the front porch.
Flittering
We forget that the things we grow for our pleasure, are survival for the other beings that live in our worlds. I am honored they keep coming back.
The Town of Torper and the Very Vulgar Day Lily
If you missed the entertaining and cautionary tale about my garden wars, The Town of Torper and the Very Vulgar Day Lily , you’ll find it on my web site at www.ellenanneeddy.com or on Amazon.com,
My hope is that if you cannot avoid your own, you can at least laugh at mine.
Lizards aren’t every day creatures for me. I don’t find them in my garden. In my wood walking days, I would find them occasionally in the woods.
But I’m still compelled by them, especially Salamanders. I love their colors. And I love their S shaped bodies. They live in both water and on land. I love things that transform and adapt.
Forest Floor
Pondering
Courtship Rituals
I’m also aware of the lizard brain. It’s the part of us that does really primal things. Some of them are stupid and some of them are vital, but either way, it reminds me that being in a body demands certain things. I also consider it a major part of we deal with others of the opposite sex. I was mad enough at the end of a particular relationship to quilt us both as lizards, upside down and not dealing well with each other. Better to get those things out
Sometimes they are information. Fall Stream was done at a time when a friend of mine had told some amazing ( and untrue) things about me at my church. In retrospect, when I looked at the quilt, I had the information. I just hadn’t processed it.
Fall Stream detail
But they’re also considered messengers from the unconscious. They travel from the world of dreams, to our ” real world” to the unconscious, bringing information we need, hiding things we cannot face at that point. Fired Elementals was quilted in the middle of my therapy years. I had no idea what it was about but was a strongly compelling idea that I had to address. Later it occurred to me that these were messengers bringing fire and light, pain and comprehension from where it had been tucked away inside.
Reunion was done for my 31st high school reunion. I did not enjoy my high school years. It was a cross between Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Lord of the Flies. So when the chief bully who had sent people to taunt and beat me up asked me to come to the reunion, this was my response. More Lizard brain, I’m afraid. But something useful happens when you face your fears through your art. It transforms, sometimes into something lovely. Sometimes into something you’re simply less frightened of. That is it’s own trans substantiation emotionally. You are different, the fear is different and the thing you are afraid of is either less scary, somehow part of you, or at least smaller. It’s a worthy trip, from the unconscious and back again.
You know the feeling. You find it in the sink or the bathroom and you have to run and get the bug identification book because you can’t imagine what that beetle is.
Well, none of us look our best sitting in the tub. I have a Egyptian sort of attitude about beetles because of my father. He loved archaeology and regularly read me Gods, Graves and Scholars as my bedtime book. He read what pleased him. My mother kept trying to insist on things like the Little Grey Squirrel. I may have been only 3 but I knew full well the plot line on the Little Grey Squirrel just couldn’t keep up with the discovering of lost cities and tombs. And beetles.
This did not extend to The Beatles. That’s a taste I acquired much later. If they’d come in iridescent purple and green, that might have been different. And if the Egyptians had drawn them with wings…..
Lady bugs are, of course, beetles, but if you dress up in black and red you['re already a buggy fashion statement that even Margaret would have considered stylish.
I'm talking about the beetles that are almost ornaments. They were often done as art deco pins.
So I've gone in search of beetles. There's a book called An Inordinant Fondness for Beetles. It will give you the most amazing bug images you'll ever see.
Here are some of my favorite beetles and bugs.
Sapsuckers. How could you not? They're pink! And they look exactly like the blooms on the branch. They are just too much fun.
Fallen Petals Rise
Brave Little Bugs
Bugs in Bloom
And the Beetles that attend the garden. I so love these. Their shiny crunchy carapaces just please me.
Then there are the beetles that are too wild for words.
Beetles in Blossoms
Light Japanese Lunch
I have a love hate thing with Japanese Beetles. The hate thing is completely understandable. They eat everything in sight, but they specialize in roses.
The love thing… They’re iridescent purple green brown. How do you beat that? I’m completely torn. Usually I let them alone.
And how can you be sillier than rhinoceros beetles?
I know. I know. I’m just noticing this now. Well that would be unobservant, wouldn’t it?
Pat Winter and I are opposites in a lot of ways. She works strictly by hand. I work by machine. She has a busy family. I live with cats and dogs. She stays at home. I wander all over the place. But she’s a dear friend and an amazing artist. We delight in each other’s work and world.
Pat is a majorly inventive crazy quilter with a gift for teaching and sheltering beginners. That’s lately been expressed in her Crazy Quilt Magazine. I’m writing a column for her on machine techniques that crazy quilters will find fast, fun and cool.
The world of crazy quilting is largely a hand stitched world. But there are a lot of reasons for adding in the amazing things your machine can do for you. I’m strictly a machine quilter for one simple reason: my hands don’t work for hand stitching. Don’t feel sorry for me. This is who I physically am. This is who I’ve been all my life. It’s not a limit. It’s a feature. Instead, it formed me as a machinist. I can do things with my machine you may not be able to replicate by hand, no matter how long you have to work on it. And visa versa. Machine and hand quilting are both incredible tools, neither of them better or worse. But they do have their advantages. Pick and choose your techniques to make your life and art work for you. And never let anyone tell you one technique or another is right or wrong.
We’ve been working to make all quilting an art form for around 40 years. That’s demanded a lot of redefinition. One of those definitions is about whether things are good or bad technique. Instead of that bold and, in my humble opinion, limited judgment we need to look at the work it self and say, “Is this cool? Does it open new doors? Does it make us all stronger? More able? More capable? How does it expand who we are and what we can do?
There are differing advantages between hand and machine work. I’ll state some of them, but remember that they’re not global. A hand technique may give you exactly the stitch you want for a piece, but not for another. Look at each work and decide for yourself. Use what works for you. Ignore anyone who has to make comments from the peanut gallery
Hand stitching: Pluses
It’s quiet
Can be done anywhere you can bring it (Car, in front of TV, sewing group,etc.)
Relaxing:
Inexpensive for set up: all you need is needle and thread
Minuses
Slow: most techniques take a fair amount of time
Can hurt your hands (Carpal tunnel, tightened shoulder muscles)
Needs high skill level: much of hand stitching improves greatly with practice.
Machine Stitching: Pluses
Fast: what you can accomplish is amazingly faster
Most techniques are easily learned and take less skill
Put’s you and your work in the protected environment of your sewing room: do you want someone in the room asking where the orange juice is?
Protects hands and shoulders from repeated action stress
Allows people with hand disabilities to do amazing work
Minuses
Takes a machine and the cost of a machine. But not necessarily an expensive machine
Has to be in your sewing space. It’s not easy to move it into another room
Most people don’t consider it relaxing, although I do
I’ll be providing some machine techniques for Pat’s Crazy Quilting Magazine. The world is wide and we want to you all kinds of ways to accomplish the things you want to do most. Pick freely, try everything, and choose wisely for yourself.
The current issue has an article on differing methods for couching yarn.
My very first pet was a turtle. Margaret decided that since it stayed in a bowl, you could always rinse out the bowl if it went terribly wrong. She was mistook in several ways. I was five, so things did go wrong. But she didn’t understand that turtles do wander. Myrtle the turtle escaped regularly from her bowl. We found her in the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, and the basement. Fortunately she seemed to be unable to complete her escape by going outside. But it was my mother’s living dread was that she might climb up some woman’s nylons during Kalerie Club, my mother’s reading group. My father always hid in the basement for these events. I went over to the neighbors. But I did hear the screams from there when Myrtle joined Kalarie Club. Myrtle was replaced by other turtles and eventually I was allowed a cat.
Turtles are another form of dinosaur. They’ve been around since then and are such wonderful living rocks. I love the dichotomy. I also wish I could pull my head in and be done with certain social situations. “No, that’s not Ellen. That’s a rock that walked in on it’s own power. ” You can see the appeal.
Here are several turtles I’ve done over the years.
Turtle in the Hostas detail
Turtle in the Lady Slippers
Fly Fishing
A Sea Change
But they are also an exercise in texture. The necks and extremities are full of folds and soft texture. The shells are hard formations of plates. My favorite technique for this is garnet stitch with thick thread. Soft tiny circles make the skin, and huge bulls eye circles make the shell. I usually use my own hand dyed thread for these.
The first time I saw a praying mantis was in a Dover book called Animals. This great copyright free book of older etchings is a go to bible for animal imagery.
I was astonished. I am an arm chair traveler. I was sick much of my childhood and early adulthood and spend most of my time put together with spit and chewing gum. Except that we don’t chew gum. Art gum spirits? Perhaps.
So I’ve lived in books most of my life. And what I see as images fills my heart, mind, soul and senses.
I instantly loved the mantis shape, the almost alien eyes and the weird way they moved. I’ve been captivated ever since.
When I got my garden, I purchased and placed a praying mantis egg in it. There may have been thousands of mantises hatched. I only saw one. It was three quarters of an inch long. And it fulfilled my favorite truism. You don’t have to be big to be mighty.
Mantises are one of my strongest alter egos. They’re good gardeners. They’re quite lovely. They’re definitely odd. How close can you get?
Oddly enough, they’re the quilts that seem to end up in major collections. Dancing in the Light is in the National Quilt Museum.
Twilight Time
Twilight Time is in the State of Illinois Museum. It was my first larger mantis quilt. Rondo Redoubled ended up in a prominent private collection. There’s just something about praying mantises. So I do them, over and over. I love their very odd,exquisite beauty. And their help in the garden.
Rondo Redoubled
But they’re really all portraits of me.
Lady Mantis
Rondo Redoubled Detail
Rondo Redoubled Detail
Delicious
Midnight Stroll
Butterfly Waltz Detail
Butterfly Waltz
Really Rosy
Lady Mantis 2
Leaf Dance
Fall Confetti Detail
Butterfly Collecting
Aria Detail
Aria
On the fun side, any time I’ve needed to to a college lecture ( full of 18 year old guys who think they’re hearing a standard quilter) I like to put up something like this on the stand. It seems to create instant respect. And a self portrait teaches you about yourself.
What have I learned about myself?
That I am beautiful. It just might not be in your taste.
That I love my garden.
That I am small but mighty. My size is irrelevant to what I can accomplish.
I’m fierce. I will and do protect things I love.
My appetite is just part of the bargain. But I’m hungry for many things. Green leaves, Sunlight, joy, beauty, wild pathways. A certain amount of hunger is simply life.
Fall Confetti
You’ll find Animals on Amazon.com. Perhaps one of the best source books I’ve ever seen. Hopefully you’ll find your own alter ego in the mirror and in your own art. There’s nothing like a self portrait for getting to know yourself.
I’ve regularly been asked why I don’t do cats. I love cats. I’ve had cats since I was a child. It seems fairly simple. You would think if it matters to your life it will show up in your art.
Yes. No. Well both.
I would like to say I could draw anything. I would like to say it but it simply isn’t true. You simply cannot draw something you can’t in some way see.
This is an early portrait of Mehitable Le Plume. Hittie was a ferocious black long hair, who looked Persian and wasn’t. She had no interest in mice, bugs, birds. She preferred larger game. She took out rude boyfriends, policemen, home invaders and dobermans. She weighed 5 pounds dripping wet and God help you if you were the person who got her dripping wet. She defended me all the days of her life.
Well yes. Somehow I could quilt her.
But it’s really a problem of vision. This old Gaham Wilson cartoon explains it all. I paint what I see. And most of the important things of my life I tend to see as bugs, fish, frogs, and birds.
When I was in California, I had the pleasure of several stays with Tina and Andy Rathbone. Tina is very active in her quilt guild, and a fine artist on her own. They had, at the time, a timid and sweet Siamese named Laptop. She asked me to embroider Laptop. It was seriously outside my comfort zone, but that didn’t matter. They were gracious hosts, so I tried.
I don’t have pictures of that piece. But I tried fur cats after that. This is Ivy in the Ivy. It was interesting. But I knew it wasn’t electric. It simply wasn’t the way I saw her. I could have gone back over and over again, doing cats until I GOT THEM RIGHT, but the passion just wasn’t there. You see, I see them as bugs.
This is the portait of Khyam, a lovely tiger boy who I had briefly. Khyam had FIP, which manifested after he had surgery for eating thread. There was nothing to do but say goodbye. I saw him as a cricket jumping to the sun. It’s simply how I am.
Every so often, I make myself try to be real. When I did Tigrey Leads the Parade, I embroidered both cats and dogs. Like all stretching exercises it was very hard and very good for me. This cat is escaping from a large parade of dogs and humans tramping past her door. If I didn’t get her form exactly, I think I did capture her mood.
So that is why I don’t do cats. I do. You just may not recognize them as such.
I hope you paint what you see, with passion and purpose. I hope you choose what you have to produce and leave what people tell you to do behind. Because the most important part of your art is your vision. No one will ever see what you see, exactly. That is the most amazing gift we have.
You’ll find Tina’s delightful blog on Artelicious. She’s an amazingly gifted soul. And a lot of fun.
What is it about the flutter of moth wings? I cannot resist them. The best part of summer is to open the door at night, look up through the tree to see moths flying moonward.
I am mostly a moon child. I sunstroked as a child on the lake and have never been able to take strong sun. So much of my outdoor life has been in early morning or late evening. Or, at night when the dogs take their last run. So moon creatures are my special companions, and I always look for them.
Not that I can leave butterflies alone either. One way or another, I really want to flutter over the garden.
Of course what many people miss is that you cannot have moths or butterflies without caterpillars.
So I treasure them all. The moths, the butterflies, the flutterbys and the caterpillar all part of their passion play. And the occasional cocoon that shows up hanging from the odd bit of bee balm.
My very first flowers were roses. The day I was born, my father sent my mother a dozen roses. And sent one for me. It’s still dried and pressed into my baby book.
Roses aren’t the queen of flowers. Lilies are. But roses are the courtesans of the garden, because they court everyone with their softness, their scent and their exquisite presence. They also smartly have thorns. The rose in the Little Prince reminds everyone that they had best have respect for her, because, after all, she’s armed.
I grew up thinking of roses as the only flowers you gave to people because that was how my father viewed it. In his mind, you gave ladies roses, for all occasions. And only Abe Lincoln roses, with long stems, blood red blooms and velvet scent. I am spoiled forever.
I also grew up thinking you only got flowers if a man gave them to you. A huge part of my therapy was buying my own flowers for a solid year. Now I plant them and pass on the middle man.
As a species roses have been cultivated for so long that there are a million kinds and buying them is a trip down Alice’s rabbit hole. So I spent a winter studying roses out of catalogs and books. Turns out I love my Hansa roses best. They’re a bush rose that blooms twice a year, smells like cloves and has a dinosaur like habit of putting out thorns everywhere. They are blissfully unkillable.
When I studied to make roses, I discovered that, unlike most flowers, it really didn’t help to mimic the petals. There were just too many of them. Instead it was more useful to follow the growth of the petals. Which is in a spiral.
The petals are cut in spirals and whirled around each other. Then, I put the points of folds into the petals as I stitched them. Notice the change in colors. Roses are never just one color.
Of course, the other thing about a courtesan is that everyone wants to be a part of her world. I noticed every garden creature out there, especially tending roses.
Would you like a Rose from my garden? When people come to my garden, I usually cut flowers for them. Most often it’s roses, because they do bloom so long. In case, like myself, you know that you have to be your own valentine, I’ve put some delicious little rose quilts on sale for you. Of course, if you’ve got someone who give you things, that will give him a break too. Check them out on my web site!
You’ll find The Little Prince on Amazon. If you’ve somehow missed this delight, run, don’t walk to find a copy to read it. It’s about growing, being, and caring for the things you love.
Once you acknowledge that you are never alone in a garden, you become aware of the life around you. The squirrels, the bugs, the robin that arrives in late March and the hummingbird that visits each July. In the cycle of things, you come to expect their arrival. And plan for it. Your garden is their home. They may be good neighbors or bad, but they are your neighbors, and you come to accommodate their schedules and needs.
I love the ragged shapes of sunflowers. They’re the dinosaur of the plant world. Not because of their age so much or lineage but because of their huge rough presence. I’ve seen circles of them grown as a play house for children. I saw a wedding where someone created the isle for the bride with them . Van Gogh knew what he was doing. He painted them over .You just cant beat them.
But better still. They are the ultimate bird, squirrel, mouse, and bird feeder. And you don’t have to do anything but plant them and ring the dinner bell. You’ll find your serving dinner for a cast of thousands
This sunflower volunteered in my front yard while I was writing Thread Magic Garden. When I went to break down the shapes it was simplicity itself. It’s simple s shapes with an oval center. Depending on how you’re viewing the flower, the petals either radiate out from the center, or spread out from one side and fold over the center on other side. Either way, YUM!
So I’ve regularly documented the many creatures that come to the banquet table in my garden. And one of their favorite dishes.
Thread Magic Garden documents embroidering sunflowers, step by step. You’ll find it on my web page.
There’s a truth that we can’t envision what we’ve never seen. I lived for so long in an apartment in Chicago that I’d lost the rhythms. There was an Easter Vigil were I walked out into the church garden and saw the daffodils. And an odd voice in my head said, “Why did they put plastic daffodils out?” Of course they hadn’t. I was that out of touch.
The oddest thing about buying a house, is that with it comes a garden. I was 44 and I had the first garden of my adult life. I had a terrifying case of constipated gardening. I planted everything everywhere. I even planted the hell strip in front of the street and got in trouble with the city fathers. I put in roses of Sharon, roses of all kinds, quince, five kind of lilac, day lilies everywhere, bee balm, Russian sage, pinks. dogwood, I couldn’t pass a garden center. I planted or mulched every square inch. I brought in a weeping juniper and white cherry tree. Eventually I ran out of land. And began to simply watch it happen, season after season All time is spiral in a garden Time is measured in one season after another. The season of tulips, of alliums, of lilies, of blackberries, of tomatoes, and the dreaded zuchinni. They cycle through faithful, every year. So the flowers themselves sudden began to pop up in my quilts.
I discovered that sheers made the best flower petals because petals are see through. I discovered that no petal is the same shape size or color as any other in the flower Which meant I needed to use easily 20 c0lors for a larger flower. learned that every flower is potentially a bird feeder. I learned I could be outside in a yard and not be attacked. It was a time of intense learning. Then I had to learn to let it go. The first October, I lost Gabriel, my big golden cat the day the leaves fell from the maple. Fall had fallen and all I could do was weep at the base of the roots. I cried until after Christmas. Then the garden catalogs started to arrive.
There’s a wonder a bout cycles. You watch things die. You watch things come back. I believe in resurrection for many reasons. But my garden is perhaps the most tangible. The cold came and went and then the cycle came back.
I walk through my garden in the winter and can see all of the dead waiting resurrection. Some things, like helborus rose, just refuse to go down. But even the tenderest roses poke their head up. I
I also came to realize I wasn’t the only gardener. There were bees, humming birds, praying mantises and frogs all carefully tending the plants. I came to love and look for their hands in my garden. It’s there’s as much as mine. After all, we all live there.
How did I get caught on dragonflies? It was a mystery for a while. I found them completely compelling and I did them over and over.Flying over water, flying to the moon, swooping through flowers.
There was a constant stream of dragonflies. I couldn’t stop.
When I learned to do embroideries as appliques, it changed the way the elements look. Instead of being ephemeral in the hand dye, they have raised up solidity. It changed their presence.
After a while I realized how much of my life was like that of a dragonfly. I’d flit in, talk and teach with people, and float out. It was exciting and ephemeral. And it made me aware how even very small encounters with people enrich and change you and them. You only have a moment at a time. But there they are, moment, after moment, after moment.
So something small becomes, as St. Teresa once said, large with love. Of course a large dragonfly is a statement all of it’s own.
It’s a floating world. And I love flitting through it.
I love owls! They’re sleepy fluffy deadly predators. It’s the dichotomy that pleases me.
We all have the soft and hard edges that war within us. The part of us that is cute, sweet, somewhat cuddly gets more and more edges as we grow older. We learn we can bite. If we’re lucky we learn we don’t always have to. It’s like the edges calcify. But what makes owls fascinating to me is the balance between the too.
I love that owls aren’t not exactly a forest animal. There’s a population of owls living in cities. Supposedly they are territorial and love skyscrapers. They tend to keep the pigeon population down.
I lived for years near Devon Street in Chicago. Devon Street is a united nations consisting of blocks that blend from Assyrians, Russians, Bosnias, Pakistani, Hindustani, and European Jewish cultures. It’s the shopping version of the world done by Disney.Without anyone singing it’s a small world after all. There was a photography store called Hoots, I believe. It had a plastic owl on the highest ledge of the building. It was high enough that I couldn’t tell if it was real or not. In the end, I decided it didn’t matter. Plastic or live, I want my city to have owls.
When the FACET group did a show called Chicago Blues, I couldn’t resist it.
I had the Hoots owl, singing the blues. Of course I called Chicago Blues.
My mother had a lot of pretenses in her life. The largest one was that she was a lady. That was patent nonsense.
Margaret was larger than life. She was the kind of Irish of which it is said, “We were lace curtain Irish as soon as we could afford the lace.” That didn’t cover it.
She danced and did choric reading competitively. She went to college where she ran ramshod over household and school rules in a ruinous and hysterical effort to go to every dance and party in the school. She taught English and History and passion. She ran the teacher’s union and the library board with a very delicately gloved fist. She married my father at 38, both of the the only left over singles in their social circle, after the war. All of that she did with courage, power, ability and steel will.
Not a lady. Not exactly.
But amazing.
She also, in the manner of most people at the time, drank gin like a fish. There was a ceremonious moment once a year when we walked the vermouth bottle by the gin making all gin a martini.
Margaret’s whole social world was female. It was the society of other teachers, librarians, and educated women. My father watched it all swirl around it and headed for his hiding place in the basement.
They were formidable Whenever they were against anything they all got together, arrived in their black dresses and pearls to stare against the town council until the council backed up. Since these women were their first, second, third, fourth and fifth grade teachers, you can imagine how these men felt. It had to be like 70 years in the principal’s office. They were never victims. They weren’t ladies. They fought like women. The council never had a chance.
Creeping Through the Charlei
Roses Red
Rosie
Magic Mushroom
Bugged Lady Bug
Bugging the Gentry
I see my mother in the lady bugs. “I’m a lady. Never mind that I’m a fierce predator of all aphids and don’t try to stop me.” It’s actually a disguise. She wore it well. I find myself peaking out behind it every so often, too.
Leafing
Arabesque Rose
Leaf Climbing
Luscious Ladybug
So often we forget the power of women who know what is right and make their stand. Like the ladybugs, they protect their own, fight their battles. Aren’t exactly ladies. And to whom does that matter?
I Love dinosaurs. I do. Sorry about that. I never outgrew it. I was taken to the Field Museum in Chicago where they had the grand dioramas of dino life and had to be restrained from climbing in.
That’s still true too. Fantasia had a fabulous bit in it where they swam, lunged along, ate and died. I’ve made them as stuffed animals and quilted them from time to time.
But one book took me to another place entirely. Hot Blooded Dinosaurs came out it 1977. It was a rage book for a while and then you didn’t see it. I’d borrowed it from a friend.
No more dragging your butt along allosauruses. These were quick moving, wild predators that deserved to rule the planet for a good long time. It was mind blowing. Jurrasic Park was such an amazing movie because no one said it, but that was the whole point. These were not cold blooded creatures. The dinosaurs weren’t jumped up lizards. They were real, tooth and claw. I, for one, was thinking of the dragging tails in the dioramas and saying, “Nope. You’re wrong. They’re HOT blooded.”
Beachcombers
Beachcombers detail
Beachombers detain
Fall Stream
Fall Stream
Daylily Pond detail
Daylily Pond
Detail in Imagio Dei
Crocodiles, sharks, turtles and dragonflies are a slam dunk as modern dinosaurs. The fossils are quite clear. They were here then. They’re still here now. But birds.The premise is that birds ‘are direct descendants. And if you’ve seen a heron hunt or look at the skeleton, it’s pretty evident.
It was no surprise when the editors insisted on Lady Blue as the cover for Thread Magic. Maybe they liked dinosaurs too.
You’ll find Thread Magic on my web site . It’s a print on demand version. All of the text and pictures are there, but the print suffers from less glossy paper.
The point to all of this is that it ought to easier. Sometimes it simply isn’t. It isn’t like there’s a simple fix. There’s the round after round of hits and answers to those hits that in themselves should be small, but as a group, they’re devastating. And one fix alone won’t do it. 
So, like the vacuum cleaner, I have a few simple tools. I am still able to teach and am delighted to continue that. It’s been my life. I hope it continues to be my life. If your guild, group or store would like me to teach, that would be wonderful. You’ll a find a complete list of classes on my site and a full class catalog on on scribd.com
It was no surprise when the editors insisted on Lady Blue as the cover for Thread Magic. Maybe they liked dinosaurs too.
