The Finish Line #17: A Focus on Two Friends in Fabric

As attentive readers of my blog have noticed, I’ve been putting out quite a few Finish Line posts lately. Recent posts have shown completed works with the focus on bird quilts, and quilts begun in either my Maine retreats or in the recently past year of 2018.

This week, I’m going to focus on two friends, Cynthia Chaddick and Kaye Burns, who I’ve had the pleasure of seeing and teaching (nearly) annually for awhile now. As I’ve been reviewing the various classes encompassing those years, I’ve gathered photos of in-progress work to take you through their own fabric collage journeys.

The above photo shows the latest pieces that Cynthia and Kaye were working on—from my Advanced Quilt Retreat in Portland, Maine in October 2018.

Aside from the very first class Cynthia took from me, they’ve always attended classes together. I found out more about this tradition when I asked them to tell me a little about their friendship. Kaye relates:

We met at work in 1985, so we’ve been friends for about half our lives. We were assigned to a project which required us to travel all over the US together on small planes, staying overnight in small cities, and spending time interviewing our clients and comparing notes over dinner each night. We quickly discovered we had a lot in common, despite coming from distinctly different work backgrounds. The project was a collaborative effort that cemented our relationship with each other and established a common understanding between us of each other’s lines of business, which served us, our clients, and our company very well. We both traveled extensively across the globe through the course of our careers, and often came back with new insights to share and compare.

 

While Cynthia is more of the traveler these days, our early times together on the road showed us that we made good travel companions. So when we both retired and discovered our shared interest in textiles and art, it was natural for us to continue to share our interests by traveling to quilting classes and shows together. Now, we get together at least twice a year to do something quilt related, as well as just enjoying this great world of ours and each other’s company.

I met Cynthia in March of 2014 in a two-day Fish, Bug, Butterfly class for the Monterey Quilt Guild in Monterey, California. This class was held before I wrote a blog, so there’s no post to refer you to, but I did still have a few photos in the ol’ archives. The fish above is Cynthia’s lion fish from that class—where she took the idea of the piscine lion fish but added a distinctly feline lion face to it. She describes her quilt idea below:

My first class started with “FantaSea.” As a scuba diver, I came up with the idea to be literal about the fish I saw while also giving those who don’t dive an opportunity to smile and enjoy the concept. So I began just doing the fish—lion fish, parrotfish, hog fish, cowfish, seahorse, and starfish. It is such a unique experience—to swim with the fishes, I hoped to share it with all ages. It took 2 years to finish ’cause I struggled with what to do with the background.

Cynthia may have been working on this quilt for two years, but the work was off and on, creating the various creatures separately to later arrange on the reef background. I know this because she worked on other quilts in classes in between. However, for the continuity of this post, the in-progress collage is pictured above from a October 2016 Maine retreat, and her finished “FantaSea” quilt is below.

I fell in love with the Susan Carlson style for a multitude of reasons, love of color, all the techniques and the potential freedom to express yourself, life, memories and more. As well as the ability to just try a piece of fabric without having to rip out and re-sew.

Click on any photos, including the detail shots below, for larger versions.

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It wasn’t long after I first met Cynthia that she signed up for an October 2014 Harpswell, Maine Quilt Retreat. It was there that I first met her friend, Kaye Burns. Readers of my blog may recognize Kaye’s name or work. As I progress through this post, I’ll include links to past Finish Line posts that include Kaye’s finished quilts.

But chronologically, let me get back to Cynthia, who says:

My second effort continued on “whimsy” with “When Pigs Fly.” That phrase actually comes from a client from my former work environment. I did ultimately make pigs fly when I delivered more than she had requested. So it is a reminder of my career accomplishments. It took a less than a year—but again I struggled with the background.

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Now let’s look at some of the work by Kaye Burns. Cynthia brought Kaye to that Maine Leaf Peeper’s retreat in October 2014. There she began a large collage of another flying animal, a Pegasus horse.

I’ve already included a few of Kaye’s finished quilts in past Finish Line posts, so I won’t go into the details of their construction in this one, but the photo of its beginning is above and the final is below. Here is the link to Finish Line #1 for the in-between photos of Kaye’s winged horse.

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In July of 2016, Cynthia and Kaye attended my week-long class in Kalispell, Montana at the Quilt Gallery. There they are below, hard at work on new pieces. You can see the beginning of Kaye’s larger-than-life portrait of Robert Duvall in the center of the classroom shot below, and Cynthia’s original sketch of her and “her” elephant, is to the right. In-progress photos can be seen in the student slide show in the Quilt Gallery class link above.

For show-and-tell (photos below), Kaye brought along her ready to quilt collage of Chief Dan George and a finished coral reef quilt, both completed independently. Somewhere along the way, she sent me a photo of her Liberty Bell quilt, also done in the fabric collage style. It was in this class that I realized I may have created a “fabric collage monster”—though Kaye is too nice to be considered a monster of any sort.

Click on the following links to to past Finish Line posts to read more about her  Coral Reef, Liberty Bell, and Chief Dan George.

In addition to the in-progress photos of Kaye’s Robert Duvall found in the Quilt Gallery post, they are continued in this Portland, ME retreat post here.

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In October 2016 Cynthia and Kaye both attended my first advanced student class in Portland, where Cynthia continued her work on “Fanta-Sea” and began working on the cat face below she called “Mesmerizing.”

My piece “Mesmerizing” was directed toward making a present for someone very special to me who has a passion for cats (currently at the 20 mark ”“ but between 2 houses). She is either fostering, hospicing or just loving the cats. It was for her 50th birthday, and I couldn’t figure which cat to do a portrait of—so I went the whimsical approach again. It took over a year but it is hanging in a great place in Carefree, AZ, waiting for cats to arrive at this home.

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In that same 2016 Advanced student class, Kaye worked on finishing Robert Duvall and beginning a moose. You can read more about that very large moose quilt—beginning to end—in this Finish Line post.

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Both Cynthia and Kaye returned to the Portland, Maine Quilt Retreat the next year. Cynthia brought her self-portrait with elephant to continue working on, and Kaye brought a fantasy collage already well under way–another winged horse which she titled “Pure Joy.”  In-progress photos of both collages can be seen in this link from this October 2017 class.

Kaye is putting finishing touches on “Pure Joy” in above photo. Detail and full photos of finished quilt are below.

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Toward the end of that 2017 retreat, Kay began a realistic collage of two herons. The photos above and below are from the class.

Recently, Kaye sent me more in-progress plus finished photos of this beautiful rendition of the two birds. What a beautiful quilt. Kaye’s description follows:

This quilt was started on the last day of Susan’s Maine advanced retreat in October of 2017, then I finished it on my own. It won ‘Best of Show – Art Quilts’ at my local County Fair this last September. I call this quilt ‘The Proposal’ because it appears to me as if the male heron is offering up the first stick with which to make a nest, and she seems to have accepted it! I bought the photo from Tyler MacDonald at an art fair in Colorado and he gave permission at that time to copy his photo for this quilt. I used some small strips of tulle with sparkly white strips to make the spiky feathers that both birds have.

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And this past year at the 2018 advanced student class, Kaye brought along another quilt begun on her own of a cowboy steer-wrestling competition. She worked from her sketch below, and sent me the following description of her piece.

I live in a rural community where ranching is the main way of life, so I thought rodeo would be a good subject to tackle. I call the quilt ‘Wrestle-Mania’ because I think you’d have to be crazy to jump off a speeding horse to grab onto the pointy end of a 1000 pound animal!

I completed the quilt top at Susan’s advanced retreat in Maine in October 2018 and finished the quilting at home. This quilt is being donated to our local historical Society to raffle off as a fundraiser this year, 2019.

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During that same retreat, Kaye began a loving and lighthearted portrait of her horse who she calls Bubbles. She wanted to go bright and playful with this piece and I was asked to remind her to stay on track with that idea. Kaye does a beautiful job with realism, so I had to take away the brown fabrics once or twice, but she had a vision, and made it happen.

The following are photos from the class.

This quilt is a portrait of my own horse. I tried to capture his personality, and I think I really did, with Susan’s help. I started this quilt at the Maine advanced retreat in October 2018. I wanted to use the theme of ‘Bubbles’, because riding him is like floating and it makes me giggle, like champagne, thus all the fabrics with circles and dots.

 

He is also quite the Casanova so I had to put in some hearts. In fact, if you look closely at his chest, you will see I added a large heart, made from small hearts, surrounded by a thin strip of red, just to the left of the center of his chest.

 

Finally, he is also a bit of a class clown, so I had some bright, clowny fabrics that I wanted to include but just wasn’t sure how they would blend with everything else. But Susan didn’t hesitate! And I love it!

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Meanwhile at that class Cynthia finessed a few areas of her self-portrait with elephant. When I asked her any write-up for this post, she kindly sent me the following:

I like working on life moments, memories of events, etc. I love doing Susan’s style and working with her ”“ because I always learn. I am now working on a piece—not so whimsical as others I’ve done ”“ but an image from my 60th birthday ”“ called “Joy!” I hope to finish it this year ”“ but as usual, I set very high expectations for myself by including a self portrait and working with a poor quality photo. But I think I will love it!!

 

I am very flattered and honored to be chosen to appear on your blog. Guess I’m making some progress — with your help and support. Kaye’s found new energy with trying to break out of her realism approach. Thank you for helping both of us grow.