More Fabric Collage Finish Line Quilts: Online Submissions 5

I never tire of showing off the fabulous fabric collage quilts that people send in. Some are started in one of my workshops, others are begun using my book Serendipity Quilts or the Fabric Collage Master Class. Some are created by past students who took the fabric collage technique and ran with it, such as Paulette Hawkins and her elephant quilt above. Read more about it later in this post.

This fresh batch of quilts were mostly submitted in November of last year, when I put out a call for submissions, so I thank them all for their response. It’s never too late, however, to submit your own fabric collage quilts. Just use the link below for guidelines.

Submit Quilt for "Finish Line"

Enjoy these great quilts from these talented ladies.

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Vicki Spiering

I wish I could hop into a time machine and go back to some of my early workshops here in Harpswell, Maine. In 2012 Vicki Spiering attended the ME retreat where she started the quilt above of her son Reid snowboarding. That was my pre-blog era and any existing photos are few and far between. So I was very happy to see that Vicki took and kept some in-progress photos of her own. She says it took her until 2017 to finish the quilt—and what a fantastic finish it is, in more ways than one.

 

I often suggest that my students create a story for their quilts. It helps them make decisions on the design, composition and background. In this case, Vicki’s quilt is rife with meaning. I’ll let her tell you the story:

From Vicki:

In 2011 our youngest son was involved in a horrific accident that left him injured with a severe Traumatic Brain Injury. After a year of helping him find his footings again, the therapist working with Rob and me looked at me and asked how I was doing? As any mom, I ignored his question and asked that we focus on helping Rob recover. However, he was insistent and said that if I gave myself a break, I could rejuvenate myself and be a better care taker. I had not sewn for over a year. As God whispered throughout Rob’s recovery, within days of this suggestion I received an email from Susan saying that there was openings in a retreat just a month away. I had full support of my family and booked the flight.

 

I sent Susan a picture of my son snowboarding and asked if I could use it. She suggested it might be a bit challenging. I started thinking of other subjects—but my family rallied and said I needed to try it. I flew to Maine, rented a car, went to Home Depot and picked up a large piece of insulation to use as my design wall.

I finished most of the snowboarder during this retreat. It was if God was on my shoulder helping me. But then I returned home and our son still needed my constant care. The snowboarder went to the basement.

 

Six years passed before I brought him back out. Rob had recovered from his injury, returned to college and life was returning to normal. I changed up the background of what was originally packed away. Actually, I had a couple of ideas that came and went. One of the ideas I auditioned is the backing of the quilt. In the original picture, our son was snowboarding on a board purchased at the local sport shop and really didn’t have much of a design on it. Designing the board became a family project.

 

My husband had just received a Fellowship as an Architect. so buildings were added. Our sons had a family logo that they had designed when they were little and you can find that it in too. Hint: My last name is Spiering (Spear Ring).

 

The title of the quilt is “Shred the Gnar.” Actually, as a mom, I have no idea what it means. The boys—goofy elementary and junior high age would talk silly snow lingo as they ski’d and snowboarded. I rolled my eyes as they talked about getting air, riding the pow-pow and shredding the gnar. My boys are now in their 30’s and when we discussed naming the quilt, “Shred the Gnar” was unanimous. We all laughed.

 

In the lower left corner of the quilt is a red patch of fabric. Every quilt I’ve made has had a piece of this red pin dot fabric in. I started this trademark of sorts in 1989.

The snowboarder uses Susan’s raw edge technique. The rest is pieced, machine free motion quilted, the trees are couched with yarn and beads sewn in for glistening snow effect. It won the Best of Show at the Wisconsin State Fair, was accepted in AQS and IQA and just recently won a major award at the International Quilt Festival in Tokyo. Japan. It proudly hangs in our family condo overlooking the Steamboat Springs Ski resort where this picture was originally taken.

I am married, raised 4 sons and now have 7 grandchildren who all love the winter sports as much as we do.

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Beatriz Englert

Bea Englert of Seminole, FL, has taken a couple classes with me in Portland, Maine and in Kalispell, Montana. Bea seems drawn to classic pieces of art. During the Portland class she based her piece on a photograph of Michelangelo’s “David” statue. In case anyone is wondering about copyright, such images have been around so long they are now in the public domain.

I love Bea’s story of her journey with this quilt—just goes to show that everything has it’s time, you just have to wait long enough for the Muse to show up. It’s lovely to see it finished and all that went into it.

From Bea:

During Susan’s Kalispell workshop I started this smaller face based on a Gustav Klimt painting, but found that the little fiddly pieces were frustrating. Even with her expert help it was so much harder to replicate a face than I realized! Using pieces of fabric as small as a fingernail was driving me crazy so I set it aside and worked on a huge pelican collage instead. The half-finished Klimt face sat near my worktable for a year until the right moment. I have taken two of Susan’s workshops so far. The daily intensity of the color and pattern planning, fabric choices and cutting, reassessing and integrating her suggestions was exciting and exhausting but oh so rewarding!

 

This small collaged face became a new piece, used for a Challenge given by my Art Fibers group, the Wild and Wacky Women. The challenge was set after visiting an art quilt exhibit at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center featuring Lorraine Turner. I chose to to incorporate Lorraine’s techniques: fabric collage, felting, and embellishment. Susan’s collage tips from the Kalispell workshop were used to finish the woman’s face and hair. After almost one year, it only took me a couple of hours to complete! The background were leftover fused florals from a Hoffman Challenge; the wet-felted neckpiece came from another workshop and the embellished dress fabric from a fantasy fabric class. I’m so glad the woman’s head from Susan’s Montana workshop is finally done and I love how it turned out.

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Pat Beaudoin

I have previously featured Pat Beaudoin (who hails from Dundas, Ontario) in a Finish Line post called “Solstice Edition,” where the sun exercise she created from the Fabric Collage Master Class appears. I also hope she’ll send me pictures of her finished lioness, which she started in my October 2019 Retreat, for a future Finish Line post. She arrived at that retreat as a first-time student, with a firm knowledge of the fabric collage process, due to all the “homework” and preparation she had done through my Master Class. Thanks for setting a great example, Pat!

From Pat:

I learned fabric collage by following Susan’s Master Class Manual—an excellent resource. I started with the spiral exercise, did her Sol pattern and then used a picture I had taken of a friend’s dog to make this one.

Emma is a friend’s dog, as it was my first attempt at doing an animal I did not tell her I was doing it. I wanted to surprise her if it worked out. It did work and she is thrilled with the collage and keeps telling me it is the nicest thing anyone has even done for her. Emma will be framed and put behind glass. I was fortunate to attend Susan’s class in October 2019 and she gave me some great tips for fine-tuning what I had done so far.

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Dianne Werner

Dianne Werner is from Manchester, NJ. I gave a lecture at her guild, Cabin Branch Quilters of Woodbridge, Virginia in 2016. There she bought my book, Serendipity Quilts and used it as a guide to make the quilt above. It always pleases me when someone takes my book and creates an image that is nowhere in the book—like a purple cow. It tells me that they really took in what I wrote and applied it to their own creativity. What a sweet bovine Dianne has created, with a very nice use of values.

From Dianne,

Our guild had a color challenge where we could use only one color with black and white being allowed. My purple cow was inspired by a photo of a cow on a magazine cover and a childhood poem:

“I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow
I’d rather see than be one.”

I handpieced the black and white hexagon background and used the fabric collage method to make the cow’s face paying attention to value to achieve face shape and depth.

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Bernadette Yuzik

Bernadette Yuzik of Montrose, BC, Canada, took a class with me way back in 2013 at the first class I ever taught at the Quilt Gallery in Kalispell, MT. That year I brought home my “unexpected souvenir” from Montana, our little Kali pup, who came in to meet the class one day. I didn’t have a blog going in 2013, so I can’t include a link to that class, but I did find a few more in-progress photos of Ben to add to what Bernadette sent in.

What a lovely portrait to remind her of this (obviously) happy dog. She captured his features so well, but it’s his paws that are my personal favorite—they’re big and furry and he seems ready to jump up and play. Bernadette put in the details, and it paid off.

From Bernadette,

Ben was our beloved retriever, I am forever thankful I did this at Susan’s class. Ben was juried into Quilt Canada, Lethbridge in 2016 and received Judges Choice. We were so happy. Since then I have done 3 more dogs, with another juried into Quilt Canada, Ottawa in 2019. This process can be so whimsical, happy, and also realistic. I enjoy it so much. Thank you so much Susan.

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Paulette Hawkins

Paulette Hawkins is from Hurricane, Utah. At the 2017 Art Quilt Tahoe class she mentions in her write-up below, she worked on a portrait of her dog, “Sir William.” The quilt was later featured in a special dog and cat Finish Line post. I then got to see another quilt of hers last year at Art Quilt Tahoe in 2019 (though she wasn’t in my class that time) where she exhibited another elephant quilt “Pachyderm Packs a Lunch.”

Paulette has a distinctive style with her fabric collage—very impressionistic—with energetic brush-stroke-like cuts of fabric. Her quilts verge on the abstract, especially when you see them close-up, with vibrant color and energy. I hope to keep seeing more and more of them!

From Paulette:

After attending Susan Carlson’s class at Art Quilt Tahoe several years ago, I began experimenting with an impressionist style using her technique. I have loved interpreting the many animals that I saw in Kenya last year.

I visited several Nature Conservancies in Kenya in 2018 and was introduced to amazing animals up close who are endangered. They are at peace having been protected for many years. This baby was very curious about us.

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Susan Buckingham

Susan Buckingham, from Sharon, WI, is a member of the Madison Contemporary Fiber Arts Group who I taught for in November 2018. She started the fish above in that class, which was held at Blue Bar Quilts. In the details below (and throughout the blog post) you can click the image for a larger view.

In Sue’s write-up, she says that this is a happy quilt, and Ruby was a happy fish from the very start—bright and sassy even. I was pleased to see that when all was collaged and done, Ruby had collected a following of both fish and turtle friends. What a perfect finish for her.

From Susan:

I downloaded and stretched a picture of a fish, giving me a larger body to work with, transferring the image to muslin prior to the workshop. Getting started was the hard part, but once I was cutting and adding, it got easier. Ruby was cut out and transferred onto the hand-dyed fabric. The small fish are from a Kaffe Fasett fabric and the sea ‘growths’ were collaged together prior to applying to the background. The upper ‘water’ was quilted with a wave ruler, the remaining quilting was free-hand. She’s a very happy quilt!