anika mari

After completing the first round of sewn leaves, I kept collecting more leaves, and kept on sewing.

There are some great ginkgo trees near my house, and the leaves turn a bright cheery yellow. I collected a huge stack of them because each one is so unique that I couldn’t stop picking up the next one, and the next one, and the next one. Unfortunately as they age they tend to speckle with little indented brown spots, but the shape is still lovely.

I chose a dark blue thread for my first ginkgo leaf, but I think I went a little overboard with the stitching on the first leaf.

Were I to do it again, I would either work with the long, loose strands of thread that follow the grain of the veining or stitch around the edge of the leaf, but not both. I suppose I can consider it my sampler ginkgo.

For the next ginkgo leaf I only stitched along the curvy edge of the leaf. I chose black thread instead of dark blue for the bold contrast of black and yellow. I stitched across the entire leaf one way, and then stitched back, creating little “x”s all across the top edge.

My friend Nic suggested that I should try to sew words onto the leaves with the thread. I thought this was a great idea, and to try it out, I sewed an “o” onto a ginko leaf. Then I sewed a few more “o”s. Some worked out better than others. Actually I think the first and last “o”s were the best, but I didn’t do them in order from left to right, so you’ll have to decide which ones they are.

It was trickier than I thought to sew the “o”s. I got a technique down by the last one (I think the first one was beginner’s luck), so it’s not impossible, but I imagine it would take quite a bit of practice to figure out how to render each letter. The challenge with sewing leaves is that the surface of the leaf is not as forgiving as cloth, or other more traditional sewing materials. You can’t run the needle through the leaf too close to another hole in the surface, or more than likely the leaf will rip, ruining at least 2 stitches. When working on the small scale like this, it’s hard to hide a mistake like that. When making the “o”s, they would look a lot less round and just plain messy if I tore through a hole or two. Notice how funky the “o” that’s on the far right looks.

I swear I didn’t plan this out, but after I completed the last two leaves, I noticed I had an “x” leaf and and “o” leaf, and they look quite cute together.

Over the days that I was collecting leaves, a few days passed when I didn’t sew any of them. They started to dry out. One leaf in particular caught my attention because of the shape it was taking on as it dried. Along the center vein, the leaf was starting to protrude forward as the edges of the leaf were curling in toward the center. I immediately knew how I wanted to sew it.

I love the color and the pattern of the leaf, as well as the shape it created as it dried. The thread seems to be the force that influences the shape of the leaf, but in fact, the shape was already set, so the thread serves to draw the focus to that natural form.

The pattern formed by the thread on the underside of the leaf also emphasizes the pattern of the surface.

The feature that I noticed the most on the next sewn leaf were the veins that travel up and out toward the edges. The straight and sharply branching lines are a natural contrast to the smooth round shape of the leaf’s silhouette.

I sewed from the main vein up each of the boldest branching veins to the point where they again split and branched off. I also sewed over the smallest detectable veins that branched from the main vein until the point that they faded off.

On the back of the leaf, the thread formed an interesting pattern where some of the lines of the thread connect from the base of one branching line to the tip where a vein branches on the opposite side of the leaf.

The lines of thread that zig zag up the main vein of the leaf remind me of inch worms.

I had one very small green leaf that I thought was just so precious and really wanted to use for something. I liked the contrast of the bright green against a large maroon leaf, and decided to keep the stitching simple.

As the leaves dried, the delicate green leaf has curled in toward the center, but both leaves have held onto their vibrant colors so far.

One thing that I think is pretty neat is that all the leaves in this post besides the ginkgos are from the same plant. I have no idea what the plant is, but it was growing in the backyard of the place where I dog sat for a while.

A few weeks ago I packed my huge suitcase full of some clothes and my computer equipment and headed to a house off of Fremont Street on the the east side of Portland. I had to be there at 8am, so I was at the bus stop a little after 7am. I was rewarded with an amazingly clear sunrise.

I arrived at the house right on time, ready to start my 12 day stint as the dog sitter of Oslo, a cute Boston Terrier who suffers from separation anxiety, and also happened to be recovering from knee surgery. Because of this combination of truths, I would be spending most of my time at the house with the dog, keeping him calm and not letting him jump on anything. I was allowed to leave for short periods of time to go to the grocery store and such, but only if absolutely necessary.

Most of my outside time was spent with Oslo on our 3, 10 minute daily walks. He lives in a charming neighborhood that was vibrant with the changing autumn leaves during my stay. On one walk I picked up a few particularly striking, colorful maple leaves that I found scattered on the ground.

I had this funny idea in my head: wouldn’t it be satisfying to sew these leaves together somehow?

I put that funny little idea aside for a day, but on one of my brief outings to a store, I happened to come across and purchase a mini-sewing kit. That evening I sat there with my thread and my needle and my tiny pair of scissors and my pile of maple leaves and didn’t really know what to do. Since the leaves were already becoming brittle, I figured they’d be completely dried out by the next day. In the interest of doing something, I completed the most literal interpretation of my idea and simply sewed them together.

I did four little bunches of maple leaves like the one above. You can see the rest here.

The next day on my walk, I collected some other leaves of various shapes, sizes and colors.

It was sunny in late October in Portland, so I sat on the back porch in the sun with Oslo next to me as I sewed a leaf.

sewn leaf, front

sewn leaf, back

I really liked the heart shape of the leaf and didn’t want to obscure it in any way, so I decided to embellish the form of the leaf with soft pink thread. I sewed up the central vein of the leaf and then around the edges.

On another walk, I collected a few delicate roundish leaves. They were small and felt rather fragile, so I wasn’t sure if they’d hold up on their own to being sewn. Instead, I sewed them onto onto other leaves.

appliqued leaves, front

appliqued leaves, back

The small leaf did pretty well on the previous example, but when i sewed one to a maple leaf, it tore, as you can see on the left side of the small leaf in the following image. I don’t mind though. To me it represents the nature of the leaf and is how it responded to a foreign process. It speaks to the fragility of the material. It also teaches me to be really really gentle when I sew leaves.

appliqued maple leaf

Some leaves were definitely easier to sew than others. I found some varieties to be brittle even when they were still fresh and felt supple in my hands; they would tear with even the slightest bit of tension. A larger leaf from the same plant as the small round leaves in the previous photos seemed like a good candidate for sewing. It was soft and flexible and fairly thick. Once I started sewing, I realized that it was a difficult leaf. I ripped right through the edge a couple of times, even when I thought I was being careful.

green leaf, red thread

Again, I don’t mind the imperfection. In fact here, I almost prefer it. It’s the imperfections that often make a piece unique. I love the process of making art, and ripping or breaking things is sometimes an important part of the process. It’s how I learn to perfect and adjust my technique.

Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera with me while I was with Oslo, so I didn’t get the chance to photograph the sewn leaves when they were first completed. As they dried, their shapes changed quite a bit as they shrank and curled. The red thread in the previous photo was completely taught when first sewn, and as the leaf shrank, the thread loosened and took on a new form of its own, encircling the the edge of the leaf, but not restricting it.

Surprisingly, all the leaves held onto their vibrant colors.

When I got back to my apartment, I decided to finally photograph the dried leaves. I improvised a mini photo studio, taking advantage of the diffused natural light of the overcast sky.

mini photo studio

When I first started taking the photographs, I focused my efforts on the fronts of the leaves. As I flipped them over to document the undersides, I realized that the backs were sometimes just as interesting, if not more so than the fronts.

back of leaves, gray green

back of leaves, red and yellow

I’ve sewn a few more leaves since taking these photos, and the process and style is evolving. I tried keeping leaves in bags in the fridge, but they tend to start to decompose after a few days, so I will continue to explore this method until the trees outside are bare.

There are a bunch more photos of all the leaves I sewed while I was hanging out with Olso here.

I found an awesome little tutorial over at Design*Sponge that finally demystified how to create a tiled repeat pattern that’s not just a simple geometric, but that’s seamlessly intertwined.

I couldn’t wait to try it out, so I made a little pattern of my own. I didn’t want to make a full sized 8.5×11 tile, so I cut out a little square and started from there. The finished tile is about 3″ x 3″ though not exactly square.

This process does the trick! I wasn’t worried about being as carefully exact as mentioned in the tutorial since I wasn’t intending to create a finished product. The final tiled pattern isn’t perfect. In fact it’s rather crooked, but it’s close enough for my first experiment.

I find the results thrilling, at least in the potential they show for this technique.

Here’s the sketch of the original pattern I’m using:

I settled on the shade of white I like–3 coats of the “white wash” I made, but you can still clearly see the wood grain since the white is not opaque. It’s a bit difficult to see the difference in this photo, but I chose the color of the block on the right, which was the lightest version of the 3 test blocks:

I tested out wood burning to create the lines of the pattern. I like the result, but when I first started I wasn’t sure if it was going to work. It took a long time for the wood burner to heat up all the way. I tried to make my first mark with the wood burner after it was plugged in for just a minute or so. It barely made a dent. I gave it another 10 minutes before I tried it again. The results were better, but not great. It seemed that the sharp metal tip was gouging into the soft wood without much actual burning. I fiddled with it for a while, going over the same lines several times and drawing with it very slowly, hoping that I just needed to get the hang of it. After maybe another 10 minutes, the metal tip was finally fully heated and was making nice smooth dark lines. I still had to practice and get the feel of it, but a wood burner definitely works best when it’s fully hot.

Here’s a photo of me waiting for the wood burner to heat up:

I tried out some oil pastels between the wood burned lines. While I like the effect, I’m not sure I love color for this project. Instead, I’m going to keep the color palette neutral. I have a few ideas to try tomorrow involving browns grays and black. Here are the test blocks I did:

**notice the wood burned lines!

Since I settled on the background color and wood burning, the next step was to paint all the blocks and then transfer the pattern.

This image gives you an idea about how I got the pattern on the wood blocks using graphite transfer paper:

Here’s a photo of the whole pattern transferred onto the blocks:

Tomorrow I’ll be burning in all the lines, and hopefully settling on an idea for how to color the positive space.

This is a pattern I printed with my Print Gocco Arts machine. This was one of those projects that turned out to be a good learning experience. Not that I made a lot of mistakes, but rather experienced quite a bit of trial and error. I learned some interesting things about the gocco machine, and also my computer in the process.

I like this pattern. I hand drew it from sketches, then scanned it and meticulously traced it in illustrator. I set up the file to have crop marks that would cut down to make an A2 sized card entirely covered by the pattern. Maybe the illustrator tracing wasn’t exactly necessary, but it was good practice, plus I wanted to test and see if my printer has carbon based ink.

If my inkjet did have carbon based black ink (which apparently some but not all inkjets have), then the printout would have burned the gocco screen quite nicely.

Lesson #1: My inkjet does NOT have carbon based black ink. The screen did not burn, and I wasted 4 good bulbs, but I suppose I had to try it once anyway to see if it would work.

So the next step was to go to kinkos to make a copy of the inkjet printout on the laser copiers which do indeed have carbon based toner.

I set up again to make a screen with my fresh laser prints. I was careful to use a blue filter as was suggested everywhere on the web when burning a screen from a laser print. This time only 3 of 4 bulbs flashed. Rats.

Lesson #2: Be very careful when screwing in the bulbs; make sure the contact is really good. I read a tip to kind of scratch the bottoms of the bulbs on a piece of paper before inserting them into the flash housing. When I did this, it left a gray residue on the sheet of paper, so maybe it cleans off some gunk, allowing for a better connection.

Finally I tried again, and got the screen to burn successfully. Sort of. I’m actually happy with the way it turned out, but if you refer to the image above, you will notice a distinct texture in the black of the pattern, which wasn’t a part of the original design, but rather an affect of the gocco process.

Lesson #3: I read somewhere that if you don’t use the blue filter with laser prints, you can get more even texture in solid areas.

I have yet to try this, but hopefully I can work it out so that I don’t always have to contend with the texture. As much as I liked the results in this project, I’d like to be able to print a nice solid area of color when I want.

When I initially printed the pattern, I used white ink on various colors of paper.

With white ink on paper, the texture was even more subtle, though it did create a nice amount of depth and detail I hadn’t anticipated.

All in all I printed about 175 cards in 2 sessions. About 150 of them were white ink, the rest were black ink. For the first batch I only printed about 30 cards before running out of ink!

Lesson #4: Print Gocco is great, but it takes a lot of ink, especially if you have an image that covers most of the screen with a lot of open area to be printed.

I ordered 5 more tubes of white ink, and had them in a few days. I think I loaded up the screen with 2 more tubes of ink before continuing the printing. The great thing about gocco screens is that you can pop them in a plastic bag and into the fridge if you run out of time or ink to finish the print run. Then just take it out and let it de-chill a bit, add ink if you want, and then continue printing.

To print the black, I used the same screen. I scraped off as much of the white ink as I could and stored it in empty film canisters (they are air tight!). Then I inked the screen with black ink, not bothering to really clean all the white ink off. Within 4 prints, the gocco was printing nice solid black without a trace of white.

I finished up, and then it was just a matter of drying the cards, cutting them, folding them, and ordering envelopes to go with them. Or so I thought.

Turns out that all the cards printed out 1/8 of an inch larger than I’d designed them to be on each side. That made them the exact size of the envelopes they were designed to go in, which basically means that they won’t fit.

It’s not the end of the world. I’d already cut and folded the 30 cards from the first batch, so they might be a lost cause, but with some tricky cutting I can probably maintain the integrity of the pattern at it’s borders (especially on the front of the cards). Hopefully the odd cropping won’t be obvious, but if it is, I won’t try to sell them, or I’ll discount them heavily, or make my friends take them.

Although it’s an issue I can work around, I wanted to find the source of the problem, and soon I discovered it.

Lesson #5: Apparently Illustrator prints everything 1/8 of an inch bigger on each side when printing to my inkjet printer. Subsequently, I also discovered that InDesign seems to print things 1/16 of an inch smaller on each side, but I can live with that more easily, so I think InDesign will be my new favorite program to print from.

Now I have about 150 cards in my studio ready to be trick-cut, but I haven’t brought myself to do it just yet. Hopefully I’ll do it soon, and then I’ll comment on the results if necessary.

Overall it was rather frustrating at times, but also fun, and I feel much better prepared and informed for my next gocco adventure.