Ellen Anne Eddy's Thread Magic Studio

As we reach the end of the year, as the days get darker and darker, it's no surprise that we've organized a holiday frenzy guaranteed to push us through to brighter times. The substances our bodies themselves produce are amazing. There's nothing like a full adrenaline high to skip past the fact that it's coal black outside at 4:30 PM and that the weather is resembling something happening in my ice box.Being a feckless soul who did all her shopping late, I got the full view this afternoon. I'm too tired to care how dark and cold it is. Perhaps that's the whole point. The holiday comes, the darkness recedes. By the time we have our breath back, it's already turning light earlier. We're through the worst and spring is if late, a possibility in the wings.


So once I've caught my breath from the adrenaline rush, cleared my ears of muszac carols and recovered from the bob and sway of the grocery carts as people play "My Isle" in the rows, I'm going upstairs to the garden under my needle and tend it. I need the quiet of my garden and the warmth of it's blooms. It's there, waiting in my art.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

As we come to the holidays and to the end of the year, there's an urge to wrap things up. Not presents, God help me. Everyone I know knows I've done well if it's not in a plastic bag with the tags still attached. I tend to give presents as I find them, whenever. It makes me a dud at Christmas, but it lets me focus on the story, not the hype. And they love me in April and August and all kinds of odd offbeat times.


But instead, I start that effort to find the studio floor, talk about mythically things we aren't sure that exist. I tend to work in howling chaos until there's a moment someone comes to visit. Sometimes I clean for the occasion. Most often, they do as they stand in the eye of it all. I've noticed that three year olds can be endlessly entertained handing you pins off the floor. The only mandatory time to clean is when the dogs become mired in thread and need a rescue effort to leave the building. Then you've got to do something.


But as I teach there's a steady stream of unfinished projects started to show process in class. In a busier year I would have finished more, just by default. But this has been a year for writing instead. So I'm sorting through the undone. UFO's are really a treasure awaiting their moment. I don't feel guilt over them. Instead, they're the perfect companion for a day without a lot of brain pressure. I put my brain on hold and color in with thread. I've always loved coloring. And I refuse to be bothered with silly things like lines.


So my floor is a mixture of trash and treasures, and I sort my way through. There was a fabulous water lily that just happened to land in this pond. Who knows what wonder lurks under the sewing machine? After all, there is nothing so neat as a nice neat pile.


Is the chaos necessary? I'm so sorry. For me it is. I can clean or sew. The one process stops the other cold.
But treasure hunting? Well I can do that and sew almost at the same time. Perhaps I'll find the floor after all.

Ladybug's Garden has just arrived from the printer!
Ladybug's Garden is about the zigzag stitch. If you've never done free motion zigzag, your missing a world of possibility. It's not dependent on fancy technology. All you need is a hoop and a darning foot. It's perfect for appliqué shapes. It covers plant and animal shapes effortlessly, and edges organic curving forms.It's a new way of coloring with thread that brings out the best detailing, shading and textures. It offers a brand new vocabulary for your quilting toolbox. 
Soft Bound Paper,13pgs. $15
http://www.ellenanneeddy.com/store-detail.php?cat=1&ID=1


I'm so proud to be offering these small books that my students have asked me for. They've told me they want books they can afford that are full of instruction, pictures and inspiration. They want simple projects that build solid skills and can be achieved easily in a short time. They want to be shown something beautiful and then shown how they can do it too. These books are especially for them.


Thread Magic Studio Press is committed to creating these small, focused books that teach technique, train the eye and tickle the fancy.


 This is the fifth book I've done this year. Other books are:
Dragonfly Sky: A primer in bobbin work
Soft Bound Paper,13pgs. $15






















http://www.ellenanneeddy.com/store-detail.php?cat=1&ID=4


Ellen Anne Eddy's Dye Day Work Book
Lessons, charts and color theory for sponge dyeing.
Soft Bound Paper, 21pgs. $20




http://www.ellenanneeddy.com/store-detail.php?cat=1&ID=2


Quick and Easy Binding Techniques
All of Ellen's special binding techniques that let you out of the box !
Soft Bound Paper, 13pgs. $15
http://www.ellenanneeddy.com/store-detail.php?cat=1&ID=3




Tigrey Leads the Parade
A silly story about greyhounds illustrated in bobbin work on tea towels.


Soft Bound Paper, 33 pgs. $15
http://www.ellenanneeddy.com/store-detail.php?cat=1&ID=5

You can find all these books  for sale on my web site at
www.ellenanneeddy.com

I'm blue today. This has nothing to do with mood.I had an amazingly awkward moment yesterday when I set a whole basket of mixed dye cups flying across the room with my elbow and much of it landed in my face. It's amazing what a little bleach can do, but there is a bluish tinge over one of my eyes and I'm so glad it's not a bruise. Or that I don't have to go anywhere. I do have pictures but we haven't figured out how to get them out of the cell phone. I'll show you when we do.


When I got done rinsing off and laughing at myself the words came back to me, The Glamorous World of Art. It does seem like a joke of some sort.
Perhaps I just never got the knack.


As far as I can figure out, art is a series of incredibly messy projects.This might not have happened in a room where five of them were going on at the same time. Or it simply might have been inevitable.


It's only that moment when you're standing in front of an audience at a lecture or a group in a gallery explaining that the whole glamor thing kicks in. Of course that has its moments too. I was at a group show artist reception this Sunday where the 30 artists roaming the show, stalking for compliments the way you might look for Easter eggs Since it was a sparsely attended show, there weren't quite enough eggs to go around. Was their work good? It was lovely! But the truth is, your art is first off, for you. If you haven't spoken through your mouth, your eyes, your hands, your voice, yours, you understand, then it's an exercise in technique. If you're waiting for accolades, it might be a while.And when they arrive, they might be irrelevant. The real question is, "Did this piece change you?"


There are those projects done for others, done for shows, done for commission. Someone with good art skills can take that project and make it sing in their own key, but often they lack what I would call veracity. It's not about them. Sometime's it's eye candy. Nothing wrong with that, but like candy, it lacks something nutritionally.


There's also a limit on what authentic work, work out of your heart, can do as well. It's therapy in a way. What makes it art instead of art therapy? Perhaps when it moves something in someone else.  Is therapy glamorous? If it is, I'll just spend a glamorous day mucking out the basement. That's how I remember therapy.


There's another meaning to the word glamor that we don't hear often any more. Used as a noun, a glamor was a  fairy spell, put on someone to make things different than they appeared.Someone would give you a handful of gold and when you left, you would find yourself holding leaves or rocks in your hand. Glamor doesn't last.Real art, that rocks our soul and world, lasts forever.


 I have an art friend who says that being a good artist is like being a good plumber. It's a specialized bit of knowledge and you work with your hands.


There's a big difference between being an artist and doing your art. Perhaps it's the moment when you're dripping blue dye off your face. And you know that's just part of it all.

Art from the Heart of the Indiana Dunes
Please join me for a reception in Chicago on December 6th. I have work in a gallery with some other amazing Indiana artists. December 6 is our last day, and we're celebrating it with a reception for all the artists.
This gallery space was offered to the Chesterton Art Association.
It's at
Racine and Lincoln Ave.
December 6th
11AM-3PM
Hope to see you there!
Ellen