Ellen Anne Eddy's Thread Magic Studio: February 2011

Saturday, February 26, 2011

In Search of Peacock Colors: Anatomy of a Color Study

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Confessions of a color junkie. I get drunk periodically. Not on alcohol or ice tea or even ice water. But I do get drunk on color. Every so often I find myself swimming in a color combination that is just plain intoxicating. It hits me viscerally. Color is visual emotion. It's a language all its own.But just because I find a color combination exhilarating doesn't mean I understand why.

Whenever I find a color combination I can't leave alone, I like to work with it until I understand it.I've always loved peacock colors. I don't necessarily feel like quilting a peacock at this time. But the colors.....
So I went in search of peacock colors. Dyeing fabric is one of the best ways to understand color. So I went out to dye some peacock colors.

Peacock colors have always mystified me a bit. They're an analogous range (a row of colors in a line) but there's something odd about it. When I charted it out on the color wheel it began to make sense.

That's when I find it's time to chart it out on the color wheel and to see why these colors do what they do. The color wheel is a family tree for color. It shows how colors are related to each other. The basic color is teal, with bright blues, purples and greens. But fooler is that olivey chartreuse green. It's a dulled out sun color in a range of clear cool colors. In another way, the contrast in the combination is the olive that leans towards the sun while all the other colors lean to the shade.
No wonder it's so exciting.

So this is what i dyed!

Mystery solved! I used an analogous range of procian dyes including turquoise, teal, robins egg, chartreuse, jade, cayman island green, and sun yellow. The chartreuse is the olivey contrasting sun color. I stalked the wild peacock. Now those colors are mine!
Don't be afraid to hunt for the big game: the fabulous colors that rock your world and move your furniture. Use them, chart them, put them where they can excite you and illuminate your world.

If you want to explore more of the world of sponge dyeing and how the color wheel works, check out my book, Ellen Anne Eddy's Dye Day Workbook. Not just a dye book, it explains why the colors do what
they do together visually. It's available on my site at www.ellenanneeddy.com

Labels: color, design |

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In Search of Peacock Colors: Anatomy of a Color Study

9:03 PM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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Labels: color, design |

5 comments

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Beadaliscious: Eye candy and puctuation

3:45 PM |

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I have a love affair with beads. It's such a good thing that at least one thing I truly love has no calories to count, packs up small and delights me every time. I'm not strictly a beader, but I still have a collection of fabulous beads, and they still find their way into my work.

As addictions go, it started small. I worked in an antique mall for a while where there were several people working in old Czech glass beads. I can ignore most gem beads. I can ignore crystal. But Czech glass can empty my pockets so fast it's like there's a hole. I made my fair share of necklaces and earrings and found myself way too involved quilting to play endlessly with beads.

But beads sneak in. They're so pretty. They're shiny. They're almost like candy without the calories. They also make fabulous details. When I did the embroidery for Tigrey Leads the Parade, almost all of the flowers in my gardens were great glass beads.

Where do they come from? I never pass on a bead shop, no matter where I'm traveling, but the bulk of these beads came from an amazing store that's literally down the street from me.
Blue Stem Beads. They're in my little town of Porter, but their collection is mighty and for the size, it's one of the best bead stores I ever saw. Almost all the beads for this book came from there.
These were hand stitched onto tea towels I embroidered. They were fabulous flowers and too much fun. You can see and purchase Tigrey Leads the Parade at my web site www.ellenanneeddy.com
You'll find Blue Stem Beads in Porter,Indiana (just an hour out of Chicago. It's an astonishment.
For the next few posts I'm going to talk about other cool and wonderful ways I've used beads and seen beads used in quilting.
You'll find

Blue Stem Beads at

300 Lincoln St # 1X

Porter, IN 46304-1894

(219) 926-9004

Labels: beads, bobbin work, color, design |

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Beadaliscious: Eye candy and puctuation

3:45 PM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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Blue Stem Beads at

300 Lincoln St # 1X

Porter, IN 46304-1894

(219) 926-9004

Labels: beads, bobbin work, color, design |

3 comments

Monday, February 14, 2011

Thread Magic is Back!

4:19 PM |

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Twelve years ago, I wrote Thread Magic. That's not really true. I wrote it over a period of 10 years before that. I wrote about the many quilts I'd made. I told why and how. I tried very hard not to offer it as a cake recipe without all the ingredients. I knew I'd done different things than other quilters, and I wanted to document what I'd done. I was more than a little shocked, after 12 rejects, when it was accepted.

It wasn't the best selling book of that year. But it struck a cord. When, 7 years after, it went out of print, it began to sell first for $50, and then for $150, and finally settled out at $450 per copy until it was reprinted.

I wrote about my own artist's journey. I showed what I had done and did the best job I could of documenting it so that other people could go there as well. I didn't do it because I thought my journey was so important. We are all in some way on that journey. What else can we do, but chart the ways we've taken? Somewhere, maybe 50 years from now there will be a young girl who discovers the art quilt movement. We're the only art movement run almost entirely by women who are old enough to have some wisdom, some savvy and something to say. It's a grass roots movement. It came really out of no where. It's supported its artists as teachers, and made unique opportunities within guilds where you can, as a quilter, learn from the very best. What will that young girl find?

My suspicion is that she might have to really dig to find out what we did. Why. How. Women's history tends to disappear. But if we all write about our artist lives and selves, we will be there for each other now, and for her later. Who knows what she will do, if she knows what we did? Who knows what we will do, as we watch and cheer for each other?

C and T is now reprinting Thread Magic again. I'm shocked Thread Magic is back in print. But I'm grateful to be part of a movement that has said it's truths over time. I hope my journey illuminates yours.

You can order your copy at my web site at www.ellenanneeddy.com I'll sign it for you.

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Thursday, February 10, 2011

Changing the Rules Can You Outgrow Fairy Tales?

2:16 PM |

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Do we ever outgrow fairy tales? I don't think so. For one thing, it's arguable that we never really grow up. We get older, we get wiser, but somewhere inside we are all the ages we ever will be. There is a four year old who sits next to a wise old lady in my head. They both respect each other's strengths and knowledges. They don't necessarily believe the same things or know the same things. But they both support each other endlessly. We need that child and that crone. They are both who we are, and are never the whole picture alone.

So this little skit warmed my heart. Who hasn't run from the world as it unravels? What I love is that she changes the rules. She stops running, takes it on with what she has and knits a blanket. How fabulous!

We too have our days where it unravels. Where the wolf sits in the forest in wait. Where it gets darker much earlier than we planned and we find ourselves sitting in the woods, afraid and unclear as to where the bread crumbs went. There was a study in a country where they stopped reading fairy tales to children. The kids got quite strange. You really do need to know what to do when you're lost in the woods.

My grandmother self knows better. She's cautious and smart. But she has no idea where the wildflowers are. She doesn't know that the mushrooms on the stump are an amazing pink. She does remind my four year old self not to put them in her mouth.

Butterfly Garden was done in response to my garden woes. In many ways, it was changing the rules. I still think that's the best way to float over and above so many of the heart's hurts. The flowers are nothing but lollipops. They're the flowers of my four year old self. They also echo flowers I had on my favorite dress when I was 16, and the floral prints coming out lately that just turn my heart over.

I changed the rules. Do I have to be real? Accurate? Embroider them onto my quilt surface? Use real colors? I'm so sorry. Those are your rules. I don't think they apply to me. Not unless I say so.

Now my caterpillars are as real as I could make them for the most basic fact: YOU CAN'T HAVE BUTTERFLIES WITHOUT CATERPILLARS.

So I pick my rules, just for me. I told this story to clear my head and to entertain. Like all fairy tales, it is not what it seems.

I believe in fairy tales. I believe they're vital to our hearts and health. I tell them to adults as well as kids and watch my grandmother and child inside nod wisely.

Today I sent The Town of Torper and the Very Vulgar Day Lily off to the printer.
I expect it ready to ship in two weeks. You can order your signed copy at
The Town of Torper on my web site at www.ellenanneeddy.com.

It's the best garden fairy tale I could tell.

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Friday, February 4, 2011

Telling Stories_The Town of Torper and the Very Vulgar Day Lily

9:25 AM |

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My mother was 3rd generation Irish. She was truly the best story teller I knew. Sometimes that's a wonderful gift. Sometimes it was crazy-making. She wasn't overly honest when she told stories. Often there was a loose and wild rape of reality.

Eventually I came to understand that she told the stories in ways that made the world work for her. Once I came to understand that, even if I was her go-to villain (and I often was) I learned to use it as a measure of where her hopes and fears were. The child with a monster under the bed isn't necessarily wrong. Often there are terrifying real monsters all through that child's life. We can talk about the one under the bed because it's safely "not real".

Somewhere in our modern world we've lost the ability to tell stories. We even sometimes view story telling as a kind of dishonesty or a case of bad reporting of the facts.

I never was a Dragnet fan. "Just the facts, Mam," doesn't always tell the story. Sometimes there needs to be a fiction in the place between us.

I'm Margaret Eddy's daughter, more than I ever care to acknowledge. I indulge myself in creative story telling because it heals my heart. Like my mother, I know that it helps if the retelling is funny, if the victim is silly and clueless, if the villain has their own reasons, and if the fight is over small mole hills.

I'll tell a story in two ways, sometimes in words, sometimes in images. If you've been following my blog for a while, you know I had an unpleasantness with some neighbors over the garden.I often quilt my garden. It's where I live in my head. I come home to my house, but I live in my studio and garden.

So in the way we create our space, I've written a fanciful tale about garden wars. It's called The Town of Torper and the Very Vulgar Day Lily.

I've put in some of the pages so you can have a peek. It's been loving illustrated with my garden quilts and is as silly a story as I could make it. We're planning it's release at the end of February. If you'd like to put your name on the pre-order list, email me.

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