Testing Shadows

Lately I’ve hinted at a new technique I’ve been playing and I’m finally ready to share it with all of you.

I’ve been playing and testing shadows, or more specifically, how to add shadows to my quilts.

The inspiration for this is the book Casting Shadows by Colleen Wise.

This book was recommended to me by Cathy Miller, the Singing Quilter, and she was right, it’s an absolutely excellent book!

Not only have I been playing with shadows, I’ve also been looking at them, and looking for them much more in my daily life.

If you find yourself bored, standing in line somewhere, look around!

Check out the way people cast shadows, the way objects stand out from one another, and why our 3 dimensional world looks 3 dimensional. Chances are shadows are involved!

It’s actually kinda fun to look at the way shadows work and the way graphic artists have tried to mimic them on billboards and advertisements. Shadows in an advertisement can make words appear to pop out at you, rather than sitting flat on a page.

I’ve been playing with adding shadows to my wholecloth quilts and goddesses so they appear more dynamic and dramatic.

See, there’s a problem with wholecloths which you can immediately pick up with this photo:

This is a picture of The Duchess, one of my first white, wholecloth quilts. You can’t see much of the detail or elaborate Georgian motifs, can you?

Some quilters will try to get around this by quilting with beige or brown thread so it stands out slightly against the white fabric.

Even with darker thread, wholecloth quilts require special lighting that casts shadows off the surface in order to pick up the amazing designs. Even with special lighting, the picture still needs to be very big to pick up the details.

So my theory is that if I add shadows to the wholecloth motifs, they will stand out much more noticeably, photograph better, and compete better in shows.

The trouble I’ve been having is figuring out exactly how to cast the shadows, what materials and techniques to use on wholecloth quilts.

Using the information from Casting Shadows book, I’ve created 2 Dresden plate blocks:

These are 14″ wholecloth quilts created from my Dresden plate stencil.

After working on them, I’ve stood back and asked myself “Which looks like a real shadow? Which is more realistic?”

Both were created differently. This first one was painted BEFORE it was quilted with Shiva Paintstiks following the directions in the book.

I was a little troubled with this technique because I ended up stitching white thread over the shadow area. If you get really close to it, it looks weird with the white stitching on top.

I could easily fix this problem by simply changing thread color through the shadow section, or I could add more paint on top after the quilting was finished.

This second one was painted AFTER it was quilted with colored pencils. It still needs to be sealed with textile medium in order to be color safe.

I like this technique a bit better because it covered the thread completely. You also have more control over the colored pencils that you have over paintstiks.

But colored pencils aren’t as good at subtle shading. I’m afraid this shadow looks more like a stripe of color around the block, not a real shadow.

You can also run into the problem I ran into with Release Your Light. Painting, even small shadow areas, can be very time consuming and is not a fun thing to start after finishing all the quilting on a quilt.

Keeping all of this in mind, which Dresden plate looks more like it’s hovering over the surface of the quilt? I’d really love your opinion, so let me know in the comments below!

I think this technique needs a bit more playing with. I might even increase the visibility of the motifs with black pigma pens or black thread.

I’m off to ponder shadows some more!

Leah Day

Note Added April 14th: Thanks to everyone who commented and shared tips, opinions, and suggestions on where to go next with this technique.

To answer the question about shadows, yes, typically shadows are cast to one side or the other, but the effect I was going for was to have the Dresdens appear to hover over a background with a light source behind.

For most wholecloths, the motifs are so complex that casting a shadow to the side could be pretty tricky to keep realistic.

I think I’m going to play more with the paintstiks and a larger sized wholecloth. I might even go with gray instead of black as many suggested.

Thanks a bunch for all of your input! I love trying new things, but sometimes it’s really hard to make an objective decision when both blocks look so much alike.