Making the 8 of Cups

8 of Cups      Judy Coates Perez      24" x 60"

The 8 of Cups came about after going through a rough period emotionally last fall, it was a cathartic piece that I created for an upcoming exhibit called Rituals that will open at International Quilt Festival, Long Beach in July. 

I began by drawing an anatomical heart from an old medical illustration engraving, extending the arteries into curving vines to represent new growth and life. I feel like when I create imagery that is painful but transformative, it helps me on a deeper level internalize the meaning behind it. Below the heart I drew veins from a heart, going upwards, which feel like barren trees, but also have the symbolism of roots to me. The fabric is 3' x 6', the finished piece needed to be 24"x 60".

Using acrylic inks and a 2 inch wide brush, I painted over the drawing with large brush strokes of color.

The only way to get a photo of the whole thing was to stand on the table, unfortunately there is a large shadow falling across it from the window.

Now the thing to keep in mind is, I really didn't have a definite plan here. I tried not to worry about whether it would come out "good" or not, because really that is not the goal. For me it was about processing feelings, thoughts, aspirations hopes... just what was going on personally.

Symbolism of the Imagery

Cicadas, I love the way they buzz in the trees, communicating with each other in circular pattens of sound and I think the growth cycles and transformations they go through in life are fascinating.

The Moon: deception, disappointment, dishonor

Strength: acceptance, courage, optimism, heroism

2 of Cups: resolution, harmony, partnership

2 of Coins: need to balance, energy, amusement

The World: new life, the end of a cycle, attainment of purpose

Cancer crab: represents someone

3 of Swords: betrayal, separation, clearing the way for something better

Grieving the death of relationships, closure and renewal

Hanged Man: suspension, meditation, transformative thinking

6 of Swords: letting go, moving beyond sorrow, the road to recovery

Wheel of Fortune: positive change, progress, beginnings

The cards represented are ones that have come up multiple times in recent readings, so I think their meaning is significant and so very apropos.

While trying to gain perspective on things, the card that turned up most often as an outcome in tarot readings was the 8 of cups. It expressed exactly how I felt and helped me realize I need to be more assertive in taking control of my life. 

Being a tea drinker, using tea cups felt like the perfect imagery to pull all these disparate symbolic images together to represent this card. After painting deeper shades of the various colors around the cups, to separate them from the background, I painted white around a scrollwork design, which feel like flames and feathers, passion and lightness.

I felt like it needed a strong graphic element, so I added a large 8. Then I used a gold paint pen to add decorative details to the scrollwork design.

The cups still blended into the background, so I added a rough and bumpy (like the road in life) outline to the cups, mimicking the style of the 8 and bringing them forward visually.

Finished painting

Eight of Cups: Moving on and letting go. Time to change direction in life. Dissatisfied and disappointed, wanting something entirely different, but not knowing what. Finding courage, taking time to rest and heal.

Preparing the finished work for quilting
I wanted the quilting to have less loft and dimension and instead have more stitched illustrative details, so I used wool felt instead of batting. Luckily I had a big piece of yellow felt that a friend gave me during a recent purging that was just the right size.

I placed a layer of Mistyfuse between the felt and the painted top and did the same with the back. I wouldn't do this with batting because the fusible web penetrates the batting, glueing both the top and back together reducing the loft of the batting, but for this project it's not a problem.

For the back I used left over fabrics that had mistyfuse already adhered to them from the Agave quilt I made several years ago. I don't do fusible applique very often so the fabrics have just been sitting on the shelf not getting used.

Quilting
For the quilting on the cups, I am using back thread in an illustrative way adding strong black lines to echo the illustration style of the vintage anatomical heart with monofilament in the needle across the middle of the cups.

I decided to continue using monofilament for stitching the feathery flourishes since I do not want to obscure this part of the painted surface with lines of thread and because the monofilament is relatively clear, the more noticeable holes punched by the needle through the fabric gives another kind of visual patterning that I think is kind of interesting.

I chose to do my curvy meandering fill stitching that is reminiscent of leaves and flourish-y shapes in the white background areas to contrast all the linear stitching on the cups with Bottomline thread which is generally used in the bobbin. It's a lighter weight thread, because I wanted the stitched lines to be more subtle.

Finishing/binding

After the quilting was finished, I marked out the finished size: 24" x 60", sewed a tight straight stitch just inside the marked line, then trimmed it to size.

To finish the edge, I chose to do an untraditional binding with 3 different cords that picked up the colors in the quilt and used them to make a couched twisted cord binding.

DETAILS

What I learned...
Because I like experimenting and trying out things differently, I always learn something new with every project. Sometimes I discover a great new way of working and sometimes it turns out that my initial idea created unexpected challenges or wasn't as successful as I'd hoped.

I used wool rayon felt instead of batting, because I wanted a flat smooth finish for this piece. I used felt a friend had given me that she most likely had sitting around for about 15 years. I had two issues that popped up from using this.

The first one was the stiffness of the felt, compared to batting, made it more difficult for manipulating under the harp of the machine. I think 30 inches would be the widest I would recommend working with felt. Wider than that and I could see some definite limitations to quilting the surface smoothly. I had to roll and fold the piece to work the central areas which sometimes got a little cumbersome.

The second issue came about after I fused my top to the felt. I had a fair amount of rippling of the top due to it not fusing completely in all areas or staying fused for the duration of the quilting (it's possible there may have been a finish on the felt that kept it from adhering), as well as some possible shrinkage of the felt by the high temperature and steam used while fusing.

After the cups and flourishes had been quilted there was a significant amount of buckling in the white areas, I don't think the fusible web was even sticking anymore at that point, luckily the open areas were not very large, maybe 9" at the widest so it didn't present too much of a problem and it all smoothed out nicely with the quilting.

Conclusion: would I use felt again? Yes, but I would take size into consideration, if I was working on a particularly large piece I would probably use a lightweight batting instead. I would also pretest the wool to make sure I didn't have a problem with adhesion when fusing. I think a newer piece of wool felt wouldn't have had the adhesion problems that this one had, I suspect it had a finish on it.

Making Black and Bloom all Over

I love getting really focused and tightly rendering a representational image while painting, but recently I have been trying to get looser and more gestural with my painting, kind of like the direction I take with some of my mixed media work, but pushing it even further. For my latest quilt, which represents my present emotional state of mind, I tried to work more spontaneously without pre-planned imagery.

After experimenting with Daler Rowney FW Acrylic Inks, I decided to use them for painting a 4' x 5' piece of cotton sheeting with large loose brush strokes of random color, to see how the inks would work covering large areas and what would happen as the different colors overlapped.

I really liked how the colors would get soft and mottled if the fabric was very wet with ink

and if the fabric was dry, there would be visible brush strokes

After painting the fabric, I used a permanent marker to write personal words and phrases that expressed some of my feelings. These messages are being written for my own catharsis and ultimately will not be very legible to the viewer. My intention is for the words to be embedded in the work like a talisman.

I also collaged a few bits of printed imagery; a toner printed tea bag and some painted abaca paper that I had leftover from making my One collages.

I also used some of my hand carved stamps with the ink and it worked great, not as thick and gloppy as stamping with regular acrylics.

My next step was to draw/paint some big floral imagery. To draw the flower motifs, I thought I would try this solid stick permanent marker I ordered from Dharma.

It was kind of a creamy consistency, much like an oil pastel. It had a little bit of odor but as it dried (after a couple hours) the smell went away. It was easy to draw on the fabric and quickly work out a design. I used the whole stick to draw the images on the quilt, it was easy and convenient but did not go very far.

I am not sure it was better than using a paint brush and paint, but it was probably faster. If you are more comfortable drawing than painting a design freehand then I would recommend it.

To define the flowers from the background it was a matter of painting different colors of ink over the separate areas. For example I painted yellow over the blue areas of the leaves and blue over yellows to get an overall green. I painted a deeper blue over the areas that would be background, making it overall blue yet with all kinds of variations in hue because the colors underneath effect it in different ways.

The large flower was painted over with white, since there was so much green in the under painting it would have been difficult to put a warm color over it without getting a muddy dark flower. As I painted the flowers and background I ended up using white textile paint to add more details and painting over some of the drawn lines to make them bolder.

The next part of the design process involved creating a layer of thorny black weeds to paint on top of the floral imagery.

I took a photo of the painted fabric (by putting it on the floor and standing on a table) and printed out a copy on 8 1/2" x 11" paper. I placed tracing paper over the top and drew multiple versions of weeds until I had it the way I wanted and made a final clean copy with black marker.

My next problem was to figure out how to transfer my design to the painted fabric. I decided the best way to do it would be to project the image on to the cloth. Not having an overhead projector, I decided to use my digital projector that I use for giving lectures.

I scanned the tracing paper and opened the jpg in photosshop, connected my laptop to the projector, taped my painted cloth to the wall and lined up the projected line drawing over the painting. I used a fine point sharpie to trace the line drawing onto my painting.

I painted the weeds with black textile paint, since I wanted it to have the most opacity and I knew it would be tough to cover the white lines.

So now you see where I am, one year after the Three of Swords quilt. There has been some difficult and ugly stuff (represented by thorny weeds) that I have had to deal with, but in the space between there has been a lot of growth, blossoming, renewal, light and life. Even the black bitterness has it's own beauty, it's just a little hard to see sometimes :-) So in other words, I am good! and life is certainly interesting, lol.

Basting
When I prepare a whole cloth painting for quilting my secret weapon is Mistyfuse. I am not fond of basting and when I discovered Mistyfuse could replace hours of tedious basting with fantastic results, I never looked back. I love this product and never make a quilt without it anymore.

I place my painted fabric face down on a surface I can iron on. For that I have a large plywood board wrapped with batting and muslin that I put on top of my work table. Then I cover the back of the fabric with a layer of Mistyfuse.

That roll is a bolt of mistyfuse.

Mistyfuse is as light as a spider web with delicate little strands of fusible adhesive, which will not change the hand of the fabric at all.

I lay a large silicon pressing sheet or parchment paper over the top and iron at the hottest setting.

After the whole back is covered with Mistyfuse, I put a bed sheet on the floor and spread the wool batting out on top. Next, I put the quilt top on with the Mistyfuse side down on the batting. Starting in the center of the fabric and working my way concentrically outward, I iron it on the hottest setting, fusing the top to the batting.

Then I turn the whole thing over, with the painted fabric face down on the sheet. I cut one to two inch squares of Mistyfuse and place them in a loose grid approximately 6 to 8 inches apart across the batting. I carefully lay the backing fabric over the top and iron the surface, which effectively spot fuses the back fabric to the batting.

Freemotion Quilting
I begin the process of freemotion machine quilting, by anchoring the quilt by outlining various parts of the quilt with stitching. This helps to stabilize the quilt. On this particular quilt I stitched around all the wed shapes with black thread and all the flowers with white thread. Then I worked on filling in those areas with different quilting designs.

When the quilting is finished, I block the quilt by pinning it to the carpet and steaming it. This smooths it out, puffs up the batting and makes the quilt lay flat.

Next it's important to make sure the quilt is square by using large straight edges and triangles to check all the corners.

I use a Bohin chalk pencil to mark the finished size of the quilt for cutting.

Then I trim the excess quilted fabric away, using a rotary cutter and butting up several large cutting mats, leaving an extra 1/4 inch seam allowance all the way around to sew the binding to.

I prefer a faced binding which is not visible from the front the quilt, giving it a nice clean finished edge.

Black and Bloom All Over       Judy Coates Perez     36" x 48"