Leni Wiener

Many art quilters work from their head–and I am in awe of that ability.  For me, it is not enough to see it in my head, I need more help in getting it to fabric.

This is the reason I work from a photo.  Using a photo as a guide, all the information I need is already there for me.  There is no need to reinvent the proportions, the perspective, or the light and shadows.   For me, this saves a lot of time and avoids a lot of frustration, time I can spend focusing on choosing fabric and building the elements.

Often viewers comment on my work that it looks so lifelike, that the body language is so effective that they can feel the life in the figures.  This is no accident, working from the photo gives me the tools.

Here is a photo I used for two of the figures I made for sightlines.

I acutally used the same photo for another set of figures, more on that in a minute.  I loved this elderly couple with their shopping bags and laundry.  One aspect of this photo that (I feel) would have been difficult to create without the photo is the sense of movement.  We can see that she is walking; he is leaning to one side which also gives a sense of movement.  Could I achieve this alone?  Probably.  Is it easier to simply work from the photo?  Absolutely.

Here, the couple as been isolated from the rest of the photo, making it easier to work with.  If you are comfortable with either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, it is not difficult to isolate an area and remove others.  But it is not crucial.

Here they are translated into fabric.  The choice of fabric is the most important part of this transition–often the colors I choose are similar to the original, often they are not.  Although I do maintain the values in the original photo, I choose color based on what else is going on in the piece.  His blue shirt worked well; her white shirt and cap were not interesting enough, so they were changed.  Highlights and shadows did not have to be invented, simply transferred from photo to fabric.

Remember the other two figures in the original photo?  Here they are isolated from the rest of the photo:

I love the highlights and shadows in both the man’s shirt and pants, but also in the woman walking away.  Using the photo these are easily translated by choosing fabrics by value, despite the color:

Here the two figures are completed and ready to add to the larger work.  You can see the values used relate to the light and shadow areas, and convey that information to the viewer.  Body language is also translated by the subtle positioning that was guided by the photo.

Making changes to the photo or combining elements from different photos can completely change the context, and therefore the final piece.  These two photos were taken at different times, in different places:

This sun-worshipper…

And this man looking at his phone in the park.

Combined, they tell a completely different story.  Here they are a couple sitting in silence, back to back.  Removing his phone, he now is simply looking into his empty hands–changing the tone of the photo.  I often combine elements from different photos in order to tell the story I want to tell.  Two crucial things to keep in mind are:

1. The scale of the different elements must be the same (this can be changed in photoshop)
2. The light source must be the same (often achieved by flipping one element so that the light source is on the same side as the other).  If the light sources cannot be reconciled, then light and shadow have to be “figured out” or a different element must be chosen instead.

Keeping a large, well-organized file of photos, I always have the right thing to add to a work in progress.

Almost immediately after posting the day before yesterday I got a comment asking me to discuss light and shadow–so that will be today and tomorrow.

The real work in depicting light and shadow comes before you start choosing and assigning fabric, it begins when you take your photo.

Here is the original photo of the man from the last post.  I have cropped to just show his shirt as that is the example I will use for this discussion.  As you can see, the light was coming from the left and that created a highlight on his shoulder and shadows in the folds of his shirt.  It is difficult (for me, at least) to start with a line drawing and try to figure out where the fabric of the shirt would drape, and where those folds would be in shadow and where they would reflect the light.

By contrast, here is a photo taken with a flash (the faces have been cropped out to protect people’s privacy)

You can see that with a camera flash, there is a bright light straight on, leaving only a few shadows towards the bottom of the shirt and in the sleeves.  This would be far less interesting done in fabric, as the whole shirt would be the same value.

When I take a photo, if I can control the situation at all, I try to take pictures that have a strong side light so that there are highlights and shadows in it.  This means shooting without a flash, which often results in a dark photo with focus that might not be as sharp as it would with the additional light from the camera flash.  No matter, super sharp focus is of less importance to me than those nice lights and shadows.

Once I have chosen my photo, I find that simplifying it in Photoshop helps define those light and dark areas.

Here is the photo side by side with the “cutout filter” from Photoshop.  The cutout filter takes the many colors in a photograph and limits them to just a few, creating a simplified map of the basic shapes.  You can choose up to 8 “levels” (meaning 8 colors) which is what I use.  You can see on the cutout on the right that the light and shadow has been exaggerated and will be easier to follow than the original photo–but if you don’t have a computer or are not comfortable using it, you don’t need to do this step.  You can also print or xerox your photo and bring up the contrast, which will have a similar effect.

This is the critical stage, finding or taking a photo that already contains the information you need to create light and shadow, whether it is on a figure, a building, or a tree–whatever.  THAT is why I choose to work from photographs.

Tomorrow, I will recreate that shirt for you so that you can see step by step how I translate this information into fabric.

This art quilt of my son Jordan playing the guitar is one of my favorite examples of beautiful side light–you can really see the light source, especially in the shirt.

Continuing along as described in the last post, I have completed this figure and she is now ready to be added to the whole art quilt.  Working one small element at a time, I have put them all together and placed the tracing template over the pieces so that I can nudge everything into place:

When I am satisfied that all the little pieces (or glued elements) are in the right place, I remove the tracing template and glue everything together–using as little glue as possible.

Here is the completed figure.  She looks complex, but breaking it down into managable pieces, the figure was not any harder to complete than a simpler element with fewer pieces:

Look at her sneakers–these were fussy cut from a fabric with color changes and swirls.  By thinking about shadow and light (and seeing it on the pattern from the original photo) I placed the freezer paper tracing so that the lighter areas would be in the right place, and so that the swirls would follow the shape of what I was cutting, giving the sneakers more of a sense of roundness.

This was also done in the sweatshirt tied around her waist–the fabric was chosen because the pattern on it allowed me to fussy cut the piece to look like the shadows in the part hanging behind her back–saving me the trouble of placing those microscopic pieces.

Students often tell me that they are intimidated by figures or other elements in their art quilts that seem complex or complicated.  In this post, I will show you how to break them down so that they are not so scary.

This figure is going to be part of a much larger work containing many figures.  But I don’t look at the big picture, I begin with one figure and even then I break it down to individual elements.

As with all my work, this figure started with a photo.  I often take the photo into Photoshop (or photoshop elements) and use the cutout filter to make the photo easier to follow in pieces of fabric.  It has been my experience that although this often helps, it can also cause pieces to blend together, which is not favorable.  In this case, I used the lasso tool to select small segments to which I apply the cut out, and leave others as the original photo.  But more on Photoshop another day.  I print the “pattern” in the exact size I want the finished figure in my art quilt.

So this becomes my working pattern.  See how the legs, arms, jean and shirt have the cutout applied, but the sneakers, for example, do not.  This is something that will be guided by your own experience.  I always like to start with a photo because I have all the information I need; value, proportion, perspective and shadow.  I do not always follow the colors exactly.

I now do a tracing onto freezer paper–in this case for your benefit I have done the whole figure.  Usually I work on one small element at a time; for example, just the arm, or just the legs, just the jeans–you get the idea.  This makes things very simple.

Here you can see the entire tracing.  Ordinarily, I would have started with just the skin tones, which means I would have traced the head, legs and the one arm.  Then, using the pattern and my red viewer, I identify the value changes and number them.  See on the legs, for example, the skin tone numbers.  I pull out my beige stash, find the fabrics I want to use and put them in number order from 1 to 5.  I compare the value of the chosen fabrics to the places they appear in the pattern with the viewer to be sure that they corrospond.

Beginning with the largest piece of the arm, for example, I cut the whole arm from the #3 fabric.  Then I cut the #2 and layer it on top, then the #1, etc. until the arm is complete.  When I am sure I like the way this element looks, I glue the pieces together.  If I am not sure, I wait until more of it is done.

In this way,  I build each individual element and pin them to my foundation.  This is a small figure, so I will work the whole thing on my work table.  If she were larger, I would take each completed element and add them to the piece on the design wall.

I do a rough tracing (just the main elements, not every detail) on tracing paper.  This I can lay over the work as I progress to make sure every element is in the right place.

you can see how she is coming along, but it is clear that her bottom half and her top half don’t line up properly.  When I lay the tracing over this I can adjust and then pin everything in its proper place while I continue.

more to come

Today I have the awesome task of putting rod pockets on a dozen or so of my newer quilts.  Why am I in this predicament?  Because the rod pocket is my least favorite part of making an art quilt and by the time I get to this point, I am itching to start something new.  So every once in a while I find myself having to spend an entire day doing nothing else.  Poor time management, maybe.

For those of you who are already comfortable with putting rod pockets onto the backs of quilts, go find something else to read.  For those of you who could use the tutorial, here it is.  Please forgive some of the photos being a little out of focus–spending the day on such a menial task makes my BRAIN a little out of focus.

Step #1 is to produce the labels.  I use computer printable fabric sheets and create a page at a time on the computer (ok, so that is one good reason to wait until I have a few to do at once).  I created a label I liked and saved the format on the computer so that all my labels are the same size, same font, same font size–you get the idea.  I print out the page and cut them apart with pinking shears, that way I don’t have to turn any edges under.  One thing I always do is to print a very faint gray line inside the label–this is my cutting and stitching guideline–no guessing and straight every time.

Step #2 cutting out the rod pocket.  I save all the scraps that are big enough for this purpose from the same fabric I use for the backs of all my quilts–off white kona cotton.  Most shows require a 4″ finished rod pocket so despite the fact that I think it is too wide, I do all of them this size.  I start with a strip of fabric 8 1/2″ wide–the easiest way to do this is to use two rotary rulers.  My standard ruler is 6 1/2″, so I butt one 6 1/2 ruler touching 2″ of another ruler and VOILA! 8 1/2 inches.  And I only had a do a little math.

Step #3 decide how wide the rod pocket needs to be.  Again, I don’t measure, I eyeball it, leaving a few inches on either side of the quilt back:

Step #4 sewing the label onto the rod pocket.  I want to do everything I can by machine, so the label gets put onto the rod pocket first.  Fold the piece that will be the rod pocket in from both sides so that they meet in the middle

This is the back of your rod pocket, flip it over and place the label where you want it and pin in place

Take it to the sewing machine and use those little gray lines as the guide to sewing this onto the rod pocket (be sure to unfold it so you are only sewing through one layer of fabric)

(ah, finally a photo in focus!)

Step #5, using an iron, press in on each end of the rod pocket about 1/4″ (I don’t measure, I approximate) then fold it over again and press.  This will give you a finished clean edge on both sides–take to the sewing machine and do a single line of stitching to hold each folded edge in place

Step #6 With the right sides OUT, turn the long edges together and stitch closed

Step #6, move that seam to the center back and press the rod pocket

Step #7 Pinning the rod pocket in place.  I don’t measure, or do math–remember?  I fold the rod pocket in half and put a pin in the fold–the midpoint.

Then I do the same thing with the quilt back–fold the quilt edge to edge and mark the center top with a pin (get where I am going?)

Line up the pins and you know the rod pocket is centered.  Ta-dah, another math-phobic moment!

Pin into place and on to the final step, hand sewing.

Step #8 Handsewing the rod pocket.  Unless your seams on the quilt top line up perfectly with the edges of the rod pocket (don’t laugh, I used to do this to avoid the handsewing) you will have to sew the rod pocket edges on my hand.  Most books will tell you to use a slash stitch, but I think an applique stitch looks cleaner.  Choose a thread that matches the rod pocket and begin by bringing your needle up right in the fold of the edge of the rod pocket

Pull the thread through.  Now put the needle into the back right next to the place where it came out of the fold, so that you are leaving the tiniest little bite of thread showing

(It is hard to tell what you are looking at here, the edge of the fold, the thread coming through the frame and the needle going into the back as close as possible to the rod pocket folded edge.)  Turn your needle in the direction you are sewing and go through somewhere in the batting–be careful not to pull that through to the front.  (been there, done that)

Travel about 1/4″ and pull up in the fold again.  Between those lines of quilt stitching you can see the little dot of a stitch that we just did.

Here is a closeup showing the top of the rod pocket handsewn onto the quilt back.  Looks nice and neat, right?  (You should see the room I sew in!  Not so nice and neat).  Now that I have shown you, I am off to handsew all my rod pockets–maybe there is a good movie on TV…..

For those of you who have purchased my new book “photo-inspired art quilts” (thank you) you know there is a section called “artists shorthand” in which I give you some simple techniques for creating elements often used in art quilts.  In today’s blog entry, I will discuss the artists shorthand for water.

Water is often depicted in art quilts, and can be confusing.  As tempting as it is to use a single fabric (as so many of them are water-appropriate) I think that isn’t as interesting as combining fabrics to make the intrepretation truely your own.

Here you can see three fabrics that look tempting to use alone as water, all soothing blues with swirling pattrens that resemble water.

When I depict water, I choose three fabrics; one that serves as the “base” and two accents–usually darker than the base.  In the next two photos you will see two quilts currently on my design wall, and for both of them I used the three fabrics for the water that are pictured above:

In each of these I chose a base fabric (in this case, the BACK of the striated blue fabric at the bottom of the fabric photo–although I know that water is blue, it is not the strong dark blue of the fabric I initially chose, so using the back looked more appropriate.  The farther something in your quilt is away from the eye, the lighter and grayer the color should look, and because this water is in the background, it should be lighter rather than dark blue.) I cut very thin (and not so straight and even) strips of the other two.  I also used a few strips of the front of the striated blue–darker than the back and in tune with the other fabrics I had chosen. These were placed onto the base fabric in a manner I like to call “controlled random” which means I distribute each of the fabrics around the composition, trying not to line things up, but keeping the eye moving around.

In this detail of the seascape quilt from the book you can see how the darker pieces of fabric form the shadow area around the base of the rocks (I looked at the original photo to know where this would be):

This is the same shortcut–one base fabric and randomly cut little pieces of two others, placed in a manner that looks like the shadow–darker at the base of the rocks and getting lighter (although still darker than the base fabric) as the water moves away from the rock.  The choice of fabrics are all unexpected–they have movement and interest without having started with a water “agenda”.

In this close-up from the Flamingo quilt (also in the book–see why you NEED to buy this book!?!?) shows clearly how the four fabrics are combined and the stitching that holds it all together:

The stitching is very stream of consciousness, moving back and forth in the direction that water appears to move when viewed from a distance.

Again, in another quilt in the book, on the rocks, the water has a base color and many other fabrics–none of which are water looking–there is an Asian geometric, a check–some lighter and some darker than the base color.

So the next time you want to depict water in your quilt, think about expanding from a single fabric to use three (or more), and using the back of a fabric if the front is too strong (remember to trust your eye and not your brain).

A question from one of my workshop students this week is the subject of this post.  My work is dominated by images of strangers, all from my own photos.  Her question was, how do I take these photos without anyone knowing they are being photographed?

For many years I worked as a commercial photographer, and often carried my camera with me in the normal course of my day.  In the days of the old SLRs this wasn’t an easy thing to drag around.  To complicate things, the camera was so large that the only way to take pictures anonymously was to use a telephoto lens and shoot from a distance, adding more bulk and weight to the problem.  Still, my photographs often centered on strangers in ordinary moments of their lives just like my art quilts.  No big surprise there.

Today with the digital camera revolution things are much easier.  To begin with, we have eliminated the expense of film and developing, making it easier to shoot lots of pictures knowing that many of them won’t be used.  Digital cameras are small and lightweight, making it easy to slip one in my handbag or pocket and pull out quickly when needed.

Because of their size, it is often easy to hold it away from my face and snap the shot. The endless dance of the ponytail was shot this way.  I was in a local cafe having lunch with my husband when I noticed a table of teenagers nearby–one girl with her back to me was constantly taking her hair in and out of a ponytail.  The movement of her arms reminded me of a flamenco dancer and I wanted the photo.  I turned on the camera and set it so that there would be no flash, placed it on the table next to me and rested my hand on the top.  That allowed me to shoot several pictures with no one knowing.  The fact that I couldn’t “aim” the shot didn’t matter, I knew it would be cropped anyway.

Here is the photo I used (faces have been blurred to protect the privacy of the people at the table).  You can see how closely I cropped in for the art quilt:

In other situations where the telephoto is the way to go, shots don’t need to be so discrete.  Shooting from across the street, or from a reasonable distance insures that the subject does not know they are being photographed.  Of course, I am not looking to embarrass anyone or invade their privacy, so whenever I do an art quilt that shows the face of a stranger, I make certain to change the face so that it is not recognizable.  Making the face a bit fuller, moving the eyes a bit farther apart or closer, changing the color or shape of the hair is usually enough.  Here is a photo taken with a telephoto lens (again, faces are blurred for privacy), and the resulting quilt:

It is not coincidence that so many of my art quilts show strangers whose faces are not clearly visible:

and often I add figures into the composition that come from other photos, or as in the case of this art quilt, are people I know–the figure of the man standing on the rock in “on the rocks” is taken from a photo of my son and husband walking on the beach taken at another place and time:

Another trick is to have someone with me “pose” just behind the shot I really want, like this one that has yet to be made into an art quilt:

Here my husband pretends to be the focus of my photographic attention so that I could take a photo of a woman with a wonderfully expressive face (blurred until I can adjust it in the art quilt).  I will extract the woman from this photo and place her in another setting when I get to this art quilt.

There are sources of photos you can use like US government sites, but frankly you will spend so much time going through the files to find what you want that it isn’t worth it.  Of course, if you are doing art quilts of landscapes, seascapes, nature or architecture privacy isn’t an issue.

If you don’t already have a digital camera, treat yourself to one–they aren’t very expensive anymore–or use photos taken by your friends (I always ask my friends for their vacation photos, and for permission to use those I love) like this one taken in France by my friend, Peggy:

I take lots of pictures, most of which will never become art quilts.  They are saved in files for easy reference on my computer so that when I do want to make an art quilt I have lots of images from which to choose, and I can combine them and change them to fit my artistic vision.

hello out there in the blog-esphere–me again.  It has been a bad month for me, having somehow sprained my right hand and damaging the two tendons on either side of my middle finger, making it difficult to work and to type.  But I am improving, and pushing myself to get things done.

In this blog entry I wanted to focus on using unexpected fabrics.  When working on photo-inspired art quilts-or any realistic art quilts–there is a tendency to look for fabrics that have the same “agenda” as the area you want to fill.  For example, often artists will look for a fabric with feather patterns when doing feathers.  This is fine, and it works, but (in my opinion) part of the joy and the excitement of working in fabric is the opportunity to use them in completely unexpected ways.

I want to discuss specifically skin and hair when depicting people in art quilts.  People are almost always the center of attention in my art quilts, and I try very hard to use fabrics that give the artwork a layer of complexity that they wouldn’t have had if I had painted or drawn the subject.

Let’s start with skin tones.  These are not easy to find in fabric.  And many people look for solid fabrics so that skin tones will be subtle and look natural.  I move in the opposite direction.  I look for fabrics that have no agenda as skin tones.  Look at this assortment I chose for a series I am currently working on:

you can see in this assortment that there is a dot fabric, a floral, a leaf pattern and a spotted batik.  None of these look like anyone I know…

but here are three children I am working on for a series of seashore “sketches” and if you look closely, you can see the fabrics.  Because the values work, the patterns work.  And the use of heavily patterned and “unexpected” fabrics makes the finished figures more interesting.

Hair offers the same kinds of opportunities.  Here is a favorite fabric of mine for hair (I am running out of it!):

(excuse the out of focus photo–it’s early!)  This commercial fabric looks like a tie dye, in fact, the pattern looks to me like butterflies.  But here it is used as hair in two different people:

In this detail of a recently finished quilt “the boy in the banyan tree” you can see the butterfly shape fussy cut into the top of his hair.  Instant shadow and highlight, instant texture.  One cut piece does it all.

in the boy from the above photo, you can see the same fabric used again.  Here I fussy cut the lighter part of the fabric to coincide wtih the highlight around his ear.  (Also note the lighter fabric in his face is a paisley)

This indonesian batik does not look like a fabric that might be considered a good choice for hair:

(again, out of focus, sorry about that).  You can see a background geometric and spaced designs in shades of white, brown and black.  Here it is in one of those children from the beach scenes:

I love this fabric choice, even though we all know no one has geometric hair, the value works and it makes the figure more interesting, and more whimsical.  Also notice in this photo that the skin tones, due to their value, already suggest the shape and contours of his face even before the details like nose, mouth and eyes are added.

Another figure in the “boy in the banyon tree” quilt is the grandfather we see from behind.  His balding head and remaining hair are shown here:

In this case, the fabric used was a swirly batik with shades of gray, brown and taupe.  I like the movement, which (at least to me) looks like the way hair grows.  It would have taken a long time to cut all the highlights and lowlights in his hair, not something I want to spend time doing.

So I hope the next time you look at skin and hair in your art quilts, you will think outside the box and use something unexpected.