I finally got around to properly photographing my latest quilt, She Has a Great Personality. It’s meant to be a self-portrait in the style of a favorite artist. In this case, that artist is abstract painter Jane Davies.
I thought working abstractly would be difficult, but it wasn’t too bad. I had more trouble deciding on some of the details.
I added hand stitching in several areas to help tie it all together.
I’m very happy with it, and I think it represents me pretty well.
Ellen Lindner
Can you imagine life one month from now? After the fun (and stress) of Christmas. After the celebration of a New Year. In the midst of winter weather and a return to normalcy?
Doesn’t an online class sound about right? If so, you’re in luck. Road@Home (aka Road to California, virtual version,) will be January 20-23. I’ll be teaching three classes and there are many others to choose from, as well. See my offerings below.
Want to make a great quilt like this class sample? (Floral Improv)
Or this one? (Double Reverse Applique)
Or this one? (Love It and Leaf It)
I’ve been teaching these classes virtually since August and they work out really well. My students have enjoyed them and we’ve had NO technical glitches.
I think late January will be the perfect time for a change of pace! Click on each class title above to find full information.
Ellen Lindner
I’ve recently changed my dying process and I’m really liking it! The impetus was the book, Colour Your Palette, by Leah Higgins.
She mixes her print paste thinner than I’ve been doing and is, therefore, able to dispense her dyes from squirt bottles. I decided to give it a try, and boy do I like it!
At this new consistency, the dye flows out of these bottles beautifully. It’s VERY easy to control the dye and even to write and draw. Love it!
Another change is the addition of a glass mixing plate.
The mixing plate has a couple of advantages over my previous method of mixing directly on the plastic. 1 – I can make notes on a piece of paper underneath, which keep me organized when I’m mixing very specific colors. 2 – I can easily pick it up for cleaning and scrape excess dye into my trash can.
In the book, Leah Higgins walks you through six very extensive exercises which help you to learn all about mixing colors. The first one was to simply print each of your basic (8) colors in a variety of strengths.
That, by itself was really useful. But, Leah takes it one BRILLIANT step further. She has you make two identical samples. You wash one and leave the other one to dry and remain unprocessed. This will serve as an example of how different things look wet and dry. VERY useful!
See what I mean, below. The top colors, in the plastic bag, are completely untreated. The ones below are washed and dried. Look for the two swatches with the yellow pins in them. These are both Golden Yellow, full strength. But, notice how much the color hue and saturation changed when washed!
And here are the other 4 colors. Again, notice the two swatches with pins in them. They’re both turquoise, at half strength.
I’ve done many more swatches following Leah’s instructions. And I’ve had fun dying a variety of fabrics. More about that coming soon.
If you want to know how to mix your print paste to this same consistency, all you have to do is follow the instructions that come on the package of thickener. (I used the SH print paste mix from Pro Chemical and Dye.)
Ellen Lindner
When my husband offered to repaint my studio it set quite a few changes in motion. While everything was out of the room, I culled out A LOT of stuff and then organized it all much better when I stored it anew. Then, I got improved lighting as my Christmas present. It now looks and functions SO much better!
Here’s a video to prove it.
This is just one of several free videos on my website. Check ’em out here.
What’s the most useful thing in your studio, not counting scissors and fabric? I think mine is my design wall.
Ellen Lindner
Jeepers! I feel like the poster child for trial and error! While working on my latest quilt I had quite a difficult time deciding on what color to make one of the design elements.
The issue was the white circles, as seen below. I loved their shape and placement, but I could see that they attracted too much attention. I needed to tone down the contrast.
So, I started auditioning a variety of other colors. Yellow?
No. I figured it should be a lighter or darker version of one of the colors already in the quilt. Pink?
Nope. Pale aqua?
Uh-uh. Enough of these pastels. What about something bright?
Hmm. Not too bad. (Actually, I tried brighter orange fabrics and they seemed a little too much to me.) How about dark red?
I like this well enough to cut out the shapes.
Well, they were no longer attracting attention, but now I wondered if they showed up enough!
I FINALLY went back to orange, now in more subdued versions.
Would you believe it? I now thought the orange didn’t show up enough. Maybe I should add some darker hand stitching around each one.
Maybe. Or would lighter thread provide more contrast?
Never one to make life easy for myself, I ripped out the dark stitching and redid it with yellow. I was FINALLY happy with it.
Whew! I’m giving myself a gold star!
What do you deserve a gold star for? Let me know and I’ll email you one.
Ellen Lindner
These are the words a delighted customer used after installing her purchase in her home. Take a look.
Doesn’t it look like it was made to go there?
Her beautiful kitchen has recently been remodeled and I think Vine Ripened looks great in this environment!
One of the things that convinced her to make this purchase was my 14 day audition policy. Any purchase can be returned within 14 days, no questions asked. It’s risk-free buying and I think that’s important with artwork. You need to be able to see it in your setting!
Let me know if you see something you’d like to audition.
Ellen Lindner
My raw edge collage techniques involves lots of layering. Sometimes perfectly wonderful fabrics get covered by something else later. However, I don’t typically rescue those underneath fabrics. Instead, I tell myself that I bought the fabric to use and if it’s function is to support later fabrics, and to give me flexibility then it has served me in a useful way.
But, on my current quilt, there’s a large shape that landed on top of the background. See what I mean?
So, I decided to rescue the red section underneath the largest turquoise shape. Both the red and turquoise sections were built on – and glued to – muslin, so I knew I could easily separate them.
But then I forgot.
Meanwhile, I started quilting the background, even though there were still foreground elements to be added. This was a logistical decision, since it will help me avoid all the starting and stopping that would otherwise be necessary to dodge all the things I intend to add.
About halfway through I remembered my earlier plans. So, I pulled up the batting as best I could on the lower portion. Some of it was already stitched down.
As you can see, I cut away the red portion, where able.
And I found two pins still stuck into that fabric! Good thing I did. I’ve had to cut them out a few times in the past.
But, since I was cutting from the back, I didn’t judge well and I actually cut into the background in the area I wanted to keep. Gulp!
But, since I work in raw edge collage, and quick patch took care of that.
Back to quilting!
Ellen Lindner
I like challenges. As a result, I’m currently working on an abstract self-portrait. It all came about when my art group, Dirty Dozen Fiber Artists, came up with (another) self-portrait challenge. This one was to be inspired by another artist.
After some online searching and thought I decided on one of my favorite contemporary artists, Jane Davies. She’s a painter and collage artist who does extraordinary abstract work.
Great, aren’t they? But, how do I make an abstract person? I remembered seeing one of her pieces (which I couldn’t find again,) that had a figure-like shape and I thought I could emulate that.
After creating an orange and red background, I auditioned the shape and placement of the figure with parchment paper.
And then, the fabrics.
I think it works pretty well. What do you think?
I’ll be adding a squiggly black line to this – again in the style of Jane Davies. I’m really enjoying working on this!
Ellen Lindner
P.S. Jane Davies has some excellent free tutorials and a great book about painting abstracts.
Want to make a great quilt like this class sample? (Floral Improv)
Or this one? (Double Reverse Applique)
Or this one, made in a shorter class? (Love It and Leaf It)
I’ll be teaching each of these classes online, as part of Road@Home, the online version of Road to California. It runs January 20-23, 2021. I’ve been teaching these classes virtually quite a bit since August and they work out really well. My students have enjoyed them and we’ve had NO technical glitches.
I think late January will be the perfect time for a change of pace! Click on each class title above to find full information.
Ellen Lindner
This is what I see as I exit my studio.
A bow. Right at eye level. It’s to remind me to turn off my mini-iron, which has no auto shut-off.
It’s a very useful tool, though, since it can get into tight spots. Recently I’ve been using it to erase lines I’ve drawn with a Frixion pen. The marks come off with heat, and the mini-iron has been able to easily access the tight turns and dips I had drawn. It erases those lines beautifully.
Do you have one of these irons? If so, how do you remember to turn it off?
BTW, I store the bow, with attached painters tape, with the iron.
Ellen Lindner