Tag Archives: Applique

Working in Series #2

Happy February, everyone! This tiny month has always been, for me, the longest month of the year. Adding an extra day doesn’t help that at all. However, the sun is shining as I write this, and the days are noticeably longer. I’ll continue to mutter my magic spell under my breath: “Spring is almost here!” And once I’ve said it enough times, it will come true! How do you get through these last few weeks of meteorological winter?

In today’s post I’m going to speak more to the subject of working in series, and the benefits of it. As said in the first post, “Perhaps the most obvious [benefit] is that it allows the maker to explore and learn from a format, topic, medium, or theme. Their work has an opportunity to develop across a number of pieces. That might mean “develop” in terms of expertise, or in terms of creating an overarching narrative.”

The idea of creating a narrative is that the quilts, taken as a group, create a context for each other. While one piece might be interesting on its own, with multiple pieces the artist can show different sides of a story or theme, making the story more layered. Consider any favorite fiction series you enjoy, whether in written or visual form. While a TV episode or a novel, if well-presented, probably stands on its own, having the longer arc of the story gives you more background and understanding of the characters and setting. And because the information content can be spread across multiple pieces, each of them can be more focused, with a clear story line.

The same is true in quilting and other 2D visual arts. With a “narrative” series of quilts, you have more than development of style or expertise, as I discussed in the last post. You also have the benefit of developing an idea.

While the majority of my quilts have focused on more traditional geometric compositions, I’ve also made some pieces breaking that mold. Two years ago I finished a small appliqué quilt, Rr rabbit.

I’ve long been amused and intrigued by the bodies of some animals. Rabbits have long, soft lines, a fluidity I wanted to capture here. Cats are like that, too. Maybe that’s why both cats and rabbits have been embodied in art since early in human history. But once I created the shape of the rabbit, I wasn’t sure how to fill the space, other than using a landscape. Nope, that wasn’t the right answer for me. Ultimately, as you see, I hit the notion of adding the letters and word, creating an image that would suit a child’s alphabet book.

I hung the rabbit at the bottom of my stairs and enjoyed it every time I entered my studio. And then at the beginning of 2023, I decided to make a crow. A pink crow. At the time, I didn’t realize it would be one of a series. However, after creating the center block with crow appliquéd upon it, I knew that it was part of a bigger story. Cc crow was born.

As you can see, she (the crow is female) and her setting fit neatly into the format of medallion quilt. And aside from being similar to the rabbit in terms of providing a silhouette and few details, and including the letters and word, she doesn’t initially appear to be part of a series. However, the series was born.

Since then, I’ve enjoyed making three more quilts in my Animal Alphabet series. You can click on an image to see it bigger.

Ff fox. Designed and made by Melanie J. McNeil, 2023.

You might or might not notice some of the repetition of fabrics used. The formats are somewhat different; Rr rabbits has four panels rather than one. Ff fox has a different font style for lettering. None of these three are as obviously “medallion” format as the crow’s quilt.

But between their similarities and differences, they tell a more complete story than Cc crow does by herself.

With a series, artists start a conversation with viewers. It’s not just about looking at pictures; it’s about thinking, interpreting, and finding meaning. Viewers become part of the story by interacting with the art. It’s like the artist and the audience are chatting through the pictures. When I showed Cc crow, Rr rabbits, and Ff fox at my solo show last summer, viewers were engaged. They spent time looking for the common elements, and asking me about the series and what else I have planned.

When artworks come together as a series, they leave a lasting impression. The story sticks in your mind because of the way everything fits together. This is great for artists – it means people are more likely to remember and talk about their work. It’s like creating a visual story that stays with the audience.

For me, creating these works as a series allows me the opportunity to develop my techniques and style, as well as to tell a larger story. It offers a chance to engage with the viewers in a way that a solo piece does not.

What’s next up for the Animal Alphabet series? In truth, I haven’t decided yet what animal to depict next. However, I do believe there are more to come!

Are there any series of quilts that have stayed with you long after seeing them? Who was the artist (if you remember), and why are the quilts memorable for you? Tell me about it in comments!

10 Things I Learned at Quilting Camp

This year I had the privilege of going to summer sleep-away camp! In truth it wasn’t camping; there were very comfortable accommodations in tidy little cottages.

The setting was the Madeline Island School of the Arts, a multi-campus school featuring 5-day classes with creative masters in quilting and other fiber arts, painting, photography, and other media. My class was Fabulous Faces, as taught by Jean Impey.

Jean is a California-based artist and quilter who, along with the iconic Freddy Moran, developed a process and style for creating small portrait quilts. Jean writes a short story to go along with each face. The story may contribute to the development of the picture, or the picture may lend focus to the story. Either way, the combination of image and words leads to charming, quirky, interesting art work.

Jean’s friendly, casual teaching style is deceptive, as she is adept at teaching more than it might seem in the moment. She conveys techniques and tips to the class as a whole, and offers a lot of individual time for consulting on projects.

Here are 10 things I learned in the class:

1. Work quickly, at least at first. Don’t overthink your process. The work isn’t precious. It’s a small piece and if you don’t like it, you haven’t lost much time, supplies, or energy. Almost anything you don’t like can be remedied later. Either way, you will learn some things about the structure and techniques of the process.

2. Glue sticks are a simple conveyor for glue. Think about it — almost any fusible we use for appliqué, whether Wonder Under, Steam A Seam, or whatever, is just heat-activated glue attached to some matrix. Glue sticks have a variety of uses, including sticking background pieces together, or even gluing backing pieces together. And of course you can use it to attach appliqué to the background.

Amy. Designed, made, and quilted by Melanie McNeil, August 2023.

See the change in fabric on Amy’s right side? That is a small piece glued onto a larger piece, from which I’d already cut a square. Also the triangles along the top edge? Those aren’t pieced. I folded a strip of fabric accordian-style, cut them, and glued them down.

Use the glue stick with a light hand at first. When you’re sure of placement, press with a hot, dry iron. If there’s a chance the glue will get on the iron, you might use a pressing cloth to protect it.

3. If you’re in a class with Jean or anyone else, find out what the teacher has to say; understand why; then consider adapting the methods to your own work.

Jean’s templates for face size, neck, and eyes will create a face of the style she makes. If you rebel against making someone else’s style, like I do, you don’t have to use any of them. (Freddy Moran’s faces are markedly different.) However, there’s some method to her madness and I’d recommend you go with the templates (or similar) at first. Try it the teacher’s way before deciding you won’t.

Here’s why. First, using templates or guides allows you to focus on process and not get stuck on shapes to start. You can develop your own style from there.

Second, she’s thought through the proportions. For instance, if you make the neck realistically thick, it will look too thick. If you make the eyes realistically sized, they will look too small.

Third, while Jean’s style is somewhat like a caricature, it also gives space to emphasize facial expression, and the expression is key to the story the portrait tells.

4. Play with the expression by changing the tilt and placement of the facial features and hair. A slight tip of an eyebrow, a change in placement of the iris, an altered parting of the lips convey different thoughts of the character.

Josie. Designed, made, and quilted by Melanie McNeil, September 2023.

As made, Josie is admiring the, um, swagger of a cowboy in his Wranglers. If she was looking up instead of to the side, she might have been rolling her eyes. The connotation would be completely different.

Extend this thought for whatever process or style you’re using. Play a bit. Try rearranging values in a block quilt; try adding a contrasting color; try appliquéing circles to minimize some feature you don’t like.

5. Novelty fabrics are fun. Even if they’re not your thing (as they aren’t mine), they can be used to help tell a story. Note the background fabric on Josie. If nothing else said so, the background tells you that Josie is a cowgirl. She’s a ropin’ and ridin’, barrel-racing, calf-roping rodeo queen. That conjures up all sort of images of how Josie lives and who she spends time with.

Again, extending this idea, try using fabrics you don’t normally use. Don’t like batiks, Civil War repros, or solids? Challenge yourself to use the thing you don’t like, to see what it can add to the story.

6. Stitch the appliqué down and quilt at the same time. Since I have a longarm, generally I’ve done my appliqué and quilting as separate processes. That’s still appropriate and useful for many projects. But for some, especially smaller pieces, combining the steps makes short work of both.

You can see on both my pieces here that I’ve used straight-line stitching across the surface. That provides the quilting structure and a uniformity of texture to begin. After that comes the feature quilting, outlining around the edges to provide a more secure raw-edge appliqué.

7. Quilt short distances at a time. Jean’s style is to do sketch outlining of the appliquéd features, using black thread to create a strong outline. She makes a sketchy line by going back and forth two or three inches at a time. You don’t have to go all the way around a shape in a single pass, and then repeat that. Stitch forward, stitch backward, stitch forward farther, stitch backward… As you continue, you make the line multiple times, giving it an emphatic heft.

8. Quilting this way on my domestic machine is FUN! In truth, this is one of the biggest revelations for me, as I hadn’t expected to even try it, much less enjoy it. Seeing the stitching laid down and how it transforms the piece is like magic. It seems to reveal the true piece as you go, in ways that a pretty blanket stitch around an appliqué does not. See point #3 above: Try it the teacher’s way before deciding you won’t.

9. Use a hopping foot and leave the feed dogs up. The hopping foot allows the movement of the quilt sandwich while outline quilting, as a regular presser foot would not. Of course your mileage may vary, but for me, I didn’t need to drop the feed dogs. That helped me a lot, because the lever to raise and lower mine doesn’t work well.

Drop your shoulders and roll them back. Relax and take a deep breath. Work a practice piece first if you’re intimidated to start on your “real” project. But just stitch small segments at a time. It’s quilting, not surgery. Nothing bad will happen if you mess up.

10. Consider how to incorporate your own style. I used pink thread on Amy’s lips rather than black, leaving her pretty and feminine, and didn’t use a bit of black thread on Josie. I also added a border or frame around Amy’s portrait, which Jean doesn’t do. Even though the shapes are similar to those Jean makes, I think both my finished portraits look like my own work.

While I probably won’t take another MISA class due to the distance and expense, it was worth it to me this time for a variety of reasons. Jean is a terrific teacher and I learned some lessons to carry into future projects.

You Can Do That?

A friend of mine, Joanna the Snarky Quilter, said something recently that resonated with me. Because I won’t be able to find a quote, I’ll tell you what I remember: just because a quilt is “done” doesn’t mean you can’t still change it.

Long ago, a woman Jim taught with told the story of rearranging her home’s living room. Her young daughter came home and saw the changes. Very confused, the girl asked what happened. The mom said she’d moved the furniture, to which the girl replied, “You can do that?”

I had the same feeling when I read Joanna’s claim. You can do that? Of course! Why not?

***

Last spring I took a workshop with a quilt artist named Cathy Geier. She showed us very simple techniques to transform printed fabric to create a landscape quilt, using glue, markers and crayons, scissors, a little fusible web, and quilting.

Here was my result. This was my first “collage” quilt and I’m pretty happy with it, and with what I learned. One thing that’s odd is it feels kind of sterile. I considered naming it “Where Are the Birds?” because there is no sign of animated life anywhere. Another part that makes me less happy (and I know this wouldn’t bother many people) is that it doesn’t feel like my quilt, because I didn’t design it. Maybe that’s just weird of me to feel this way… But maybe because of that, I like the back that shows the quilting as much as the front.

The gallery below shows a squared-off photo. Click either image to see bigger and with right proportions.

***

Last year I found a line drawing of a deer’s head that I modified and drew on tracing paper. I considered a variety of ways to use it as an appliqué pattern. I could just use a solid cut-out on a solid background to maximize the impact. That’s still an option, but last week I tried using more of a fabric collage technique. Again, remember I’m still figuring out appliqué as a technique and as a way of using space.

I started by fusing fabric onto the paper.

This was not a good plan. Honestly I FORGOT it was tracing paper, because it looks almost exactly like parchment paper. Fusible web releases from parchment paper; it does NOT release from tracing paper.

It was okay. I actually laughed. I didn’t love what I’d already done, so didn’t mind doing it over.

Once I rebuilt the deer’s head, I needed to choose a background. Here it is on a piece of fabric, printed with a forest design.

Still didn’t love it, but it’s better and at least let me imagine a direction for it. Anything very busy will obscure the deer, but anything very plain will show off the deer more than it deserves. 🙂

Then I saw Joanna’s wise words and thought, what if I put it on the trees landscape?

It is all stitched down now, using a lightning-style zigzaggy stitch from my machine that looks more natural than a plain zigzag. Here’s the truth: I still don’t love it, but I like both the deer and the landscape better now that they’re together. And I learned a lot. Win!

P.S. If you are looking for an interesting blog to follow, check out Joanna the Snarky Quilter. While she has her background in traditional quilting, as long as I’ve known her she’s moved more and more deeply into art quilting. She often shares techniques she’s using for surface design, and she shares process as she moved through projects. She’s very articulate, too, which makes for great reading.

Still a Beginner

Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time writing a blog post that was bad — stupid, indulgent, unpublishable. No, not really all that, but sort of a waste of time, and not good enough to simply revise.

I was indulging myself a bit with how long I’ve been blogging, how many posts I’ve published, how many comments.. yada yada. Who cares, really? It was boring even to me. 🙂 But so you don’t think too poorly of me, I was trying to answer a question posed in one of my Facebook groups recently. One of the members asked bloggers, “How do you find the time or inspiration on what to post about?”

The short answer to that question is, sometimes I don’t find the time. And sometimes I do. All kinds of things inspire my writing. I write about what I’m interested in. Sometimes that’s projects I’m working on, sometimes it’s design ideas or tutorials, sometimes it’s current events, sometimes it’s things that light my imagination, like a museum trip. Now and then I just whine about something quilting-related. 🙂 I always always have things to write about. The real issue for me is, if I’m spending my time writing, what am I not doing while keeping the blog up to date? It’s hard to allocate my time well.

I am not worried about growing my audience, because I write primarily for myself. No one is paying me to do this. But there are people out there, (hello, people!) and I enjoy sharing with others. I enjoy teaching and try to craft my posts carefully so they are useful in some way to readers. If I truly were just using it as a personal diary, it wouldn’t be the way it is.

***

Even though I have a few blog posts under my belt, and have made a few quilts, I’m still a beginner at both. There’s still plenty I don’t know how to do, or haven’t done enough to actually get good at it.

For example, I’ve been working on appliqué projects this year, from simple flowers on the ¡Fiesta! quilt, to all the Hands and Hearts, to the more elaborate Rooster, to the crazy mask. Each one has taught me more about how to envision shapes in space, how to choose colors and fabrics, and how to attach them appropriately for the purpose.

I’m very much a beginner in this area, both from a technical standpoint and a design aspect. It’s a whole new way of using my brain. I want to be really good! but I’m just not yet. And I need to remember:

When learning something new, be patient.
Allow for your work to look like a beginner’s.
Just keep at it and things will improve.

Here’s my new start on an old project.

I actually started this two-and-a-half years ago, which for me is a really long time. I began it with a sketch, created by drawing and cutting shapes, and then tracing around the shapes to establish approximate position.

And this is what I said about it at the time: “I’m planning to do old-fashioned needle-turn appliqué, without all the glueing and pressing and fusing and fussing that some of the other techniques use. This will be relatively primitive, both due to my skills and my intention. The colors I’m choosing are joyful, not stuffy. I’ll show you progress as I make it.”

HAHAHA! Yeah, the intention was to use needle-turn appliqué, but then I realized I don’t really enjoy it, and the project would never get done. Not only did I change applique methods, I also changed fabrics for everything but the stems and the paler leaves, which were already stitched down. The first ones I chose were too muted, not strong enough to stand up to their background. The more saturated colors work better than the ones discarded.

The next modification to it will be the addition of a bird in the lower right corner.

***

And speaking of beginning, a different member of that same Facebook group asked today about a “scant” quarter-inch seam allowance. A variety of responses were given, from “it doesn’t matter as long as your seam allowance is consistent” to “it DOES matter if you want things to fit.” The best answer included a link to this video, which explains exactly why a good seam allowance matters.

Some other good tips for beginning quilters are here, including in the comments.

As always, thanks for reading!

The Rooster

Sometimes all the what-ifs lead to creative breakthroughs, and sometimes they just set up roadblocks to making. If you chase every possible path, you’ll never get anything done.

After finishing the checkerboard border, I had lots of choices available. The size of the center (center block plus the border) was odd, something like 19.75″, and it would have been awkward to add a border of regular square blocks at that point. I could have added a spacer border to make a an easier fit, but I wasn’t happy with the sizing that would have required, either. And I would have needed a plan for type of pieced border, so I could choose the spacer border width.

What if, instead of a pieced border, I made an appliquéd one? Then the width wouldn’t matter, except relative to proportions. Yeah, that could work. That begs the question, what kind of appliqué? Something pretty simply, something small to work with the proportions, something in colors already used, or similar enough to them that the color isn’t confusing. Well, I guess that narrows it down…

At least it let me get started. After the dark blue and bronze checkerboard, I wanted an edge of salmon. From a construction standpoint, the narrow border would stabilize the piecing, since the checkerboard squares finish at 1 1/8″. From a design standpoint, it would repeat the color of the rooster’s feet and eyeball, and refer to the background coral (mesh-like print) and the rooster’s comb and wattle. It would brighten the composition with the accent, and give separation from another, darker border.

I decided to try for a finished width of about 1/4″. In retrospect, a flange would have worked well, too, and may have been easier to execute. But this worked well enough. Before attaching, I made sure the center’s corners were good and square. That involved shaving off tiny bits of the pieced checkerboard along the edges. Fortunately they were in pretty good shape. Then I pinned the narrow salmon border with lots of fine pins, so the two pieces were flush along the edges, and they wouldn’t slip away from each other. I stitched carefully to maintain the seam allowance. (And when I add borders, I always backstitch at both ends.)

I had already chosen a blue for the last border. It’s the same color as the blue on the chicken, but rather than a random-looking stripe slashing across it, it has a very fine cross-hatching of black and off-white, suggesting plaid. The regularity of design repeats the regularity in the checkerboard, but of a completely different scale.

I drew a simple shape to appliqué, thinking I could just repeat it a number of times around the edge. After digging through lots of fabric, I chose a dark toffee color with a brown leaf print. I pressed fusible web onto a small piece of it and cut out three of the shape. The shape is either an X or a +, depending on orientation. With the size I cut it, there is only room for it as an X.

Once I had the three samples and auditioned them on the blue border, I decided they took too much attention away from the rooster. I could have gone through a million more what-ifs, everything from what color or width of border to use, what color or shape of appliqué, whether to go back to the idea of a pieced border. The fact is, though, I like it just the way it is. I declare the rooster top “done.”

Catbird Quilt Studio

Medallion Quilts, Among Other Things