Tag Archives: featured

Blog, Inspiration, Photo Wednesday, Wanderings

Butchart Garden Beauties – Photo Wednesday

April 8, 2015 Andree Fredette

Easter Sunday was gorgeous, in Victoria, BC. The sun was out, it wasn’t too cool. Perfect time to visit the Butchart Gardens, early in the morning. Before the crowds.

I was like a little kid, loose in the candy shop. Colour everywhere. Above, a purple Japanese azalea (I think). It was taller than me, and a total dark lilac statement plant.

Above, the inviting entrance to the Italian garden courtyard. I don’t think I’ve seen too many hedges that dense, ever, except on the West Coast.

Of course there were tulips everywhere. An abundance of tulips, interspersed with hyacinths and other partners in beauty. Wish I could have captured the scent. Intoxicating!

And on closer inspection, morning dew was still on the flowers, like delicate jewelry…

Everywhere I turned, more magic… I filled my camera card until it had indigestion. Nothing worse than an “error message” on your only card at hand (damn!). This probably means a return trip, next season…

Oh, and at the top of this post, an intimate close-up of pink fawn lilies (Erythronium). I am not sure of the exact type. Deep in the Japanese area of the gardens, another place of beauty… But that’s for another day.

About Art, Blog, Inspiration, Textile work

Quilt and Stitch… Some Ideas, Part 3

April 3, 2015 Andree Fredette 2 Comments

Here is the third part of my little series (Quilt and Stitch posts One, and Two) on how I approach the quilting or texturing (or embroidery) of a quilt.

Once I create a top, or quilt surface, I spend a lot of time staring at it, trying to decide how I will add the layer of texture. Where will the lines be most effective? Does it need a lot of texture? Or restraint?

Those are hard decisions. It is sooooo easy to go overboard.

Most of the time, I follow the pieced lines (where two colours meet, for example), and texture between the lines. But there are always exceptions. Rules that need breaking…

And then, there is just the simple joy of meandering on a single piece of fabric, while changing thread colours. I have made discoveries that way! A line of black, for example (on the left, above), serves to highlight its light-coloured neighbour. Relief, in a way… On the right, above, I first placed a little pair of meandering lines in regular thread. Then I turned the piece over, and filled-in that little corridor with a “mossy stitch”, which is a tight figure-eight stitch, using a thick thread wound in my machine bobbin. Time consuming, but very zen.

Finally, another little “sketch”, a practice piece where I tried out various ideas… You can see the evolution of lines, with their accessory and filler motifs.

About Art, Blog, Inspiration, Textile work

Quilt and Stitch… Some Ideas, Part 2

March 20, 2015 Andree Fredette 2 Comments

As a follow-up on last week’s Quilt and Stitch post One, about my approach to mark-making on textiles, a.k.a. quilting, here is another set of closeups shots to illustrate my fascination with line repeats.

Above, two sets of very different line repeats: a curvy grouping at the bottom, contrasted with very angular paired lines around the “sun”, which are punctuated by little “seeds” of zig-zag-in-place, just because I imagined it might be interesting (smile).

The photo above is a real close-up, those stitching lines are about an 1/8″ apart, and the fabric is hand-dyed pima cotton, with a very tight weave. The sunburst effect on the hand-dye was achieved with tightly knotted elastics, a technique from the sixties… But resist dyeing, or tie-dye, is a subject for another day.

Above, another sample that shows how variations in spacing can create a vibration effect. Almost tribal. I could have changed thread colours, but chose to stay with the hot pink. In later posts on this topic, I will show you how thread colour can play a big role in a group of stitched lines.

Above: circular stitching in place, to create a little “pasty”, or embroidered dot. I left the thread on the piece between dots. For the top line of pasties, I decided to come back and to add lines of stitching to highlight the linear connection. I could have cut the threads… but it is far more interesting this way.

And this last example is a combo of machine and hand-stitching. I started with a line, punctuated by “pasties” which I topped with a thread buildup, to create a thread bead, practically. Then, I returned with another colour, and stitched up and down and around the pasties, because I felt like it…. The other lines on the right are stitched/embroidered by hand. You can also spot my fingernail-dragging mark on the fabric, where I had considered adding yet another line…

All in a day’s play.

About Art, Blog, Textile work

Quilt and Stitch… Some Ideas, Part 1

March 13, 2015 Andree Fredette

Before starting to texture a quilt, I usually go through what I call my doodling step, where I try out some ideas with a felt tip pen on some newsprint. I draw lines without lifting the felt tip pen from the paper, to imitate the “endless line” motion of a sewing machine stitching line…

Sometimes, the bright ideas are elusive and I scrap a lot of paper… And sometimes, light bulbs go on and I save my pile of paper sketches. On a good day, I can come up with several usable textures and on a bad day, well, it’s a really dry run. Go figure.

Then – before tackling an actual quilt – I take my bright ideas to little “quilt sandwiches”, to practice and warm up.

In the sample above, you can see the light green stitching lines, about an inch apart, that form “corridors”. I often use those as a first step, to establish a direction, especially when I am trying to evoke a stem, or to draw long lines across a piece.

After laying my road map, I come back (in this case, with a darker thread) and fill in with the patterns that I pick up in the greenery that surrounds me. I am really fascinated by the lines of foliage – both on shore and in the water – on the island. Grasses, plants, kelp, anything is a good source of inspiration.

And I have found that pattern repeats, especially when they are uneven, are very interesting. They move the eye around…

Here is an example of a textured quilt study, using simple lines to enhance the pieced design.

I am not interested in perfection, because perfectly spaced lines and stitches look too automated, machine-driven. I prefer the lyrical “élan”, the irregular repeats, much like wavelets washing ashore, no two exactly the same. I want my stitching or mark-making to look a bit more like someone applying pressure on a brush, while painting or drawing. Because I draw with a sewing machine…

Blog, Just Because, Wanderings

Duck Season

February 13, 2015 Andree Fredette

Winter time is duck season around Saturna. Duck and other birds spend time around the island, before going back up North… This is a trio of Harlequin ducks males (Histrionicus histrionicus – don’t you love that latin name?), swimming by the rocks. More info about Harlequin Ducks here.

Their paddling leaves nice tracks in the water… Just below the tracks, you can see the circular “dive” of a feeding duck.

These flashy birds (well, the drakes are flashy anyway) are only around our waters during the winter, and return to mainland rivers and streams to breed and feed during the milder months.

I took the photo at the top of this post, of unexplained ripples and wavelets in the water, because it was intriguing. There were no boats nearby…

Andrée Fredette