The Finish Line: Fabric Collage Quilts of Jerri Stroud

Three and a half years ago in 2016, I met Jerri Stroud when she attended my class my Maine Quilt Retreat. In September last year, I renewed my acquaintance with her at her quilt guild in Shoreline, WA, where I taught a two-day class.

Turns out, Jerri has kept herself busy since that first class in Harpswell, making quilt after quilt. She brought them to class so I could see them and get some photos. She had so many (and they were just so darn good), it turned into a blog post all her own.

As you can read about in a post written about Jerri when she attended that first class, she had been quilting for some time before I met her. I find that those with some experience tend to develop a distinctive style, as if working with fabric has somehow hard-wired their brain to tune in to certain colors and types of fabrics. These quilts are distinctly and recognizably hers.

Jerri is active in her quilt guild, Quilters Anonymous. She regularly wins awards in shows she enters both in her guild and elsewhere.

She also writes about her quilts in her blog. For each quilt below I’ve included a link to Jerri’s post about that particular quilt. I encourage you to read what she has to say. She has helpful insights into the process and interesting background stories about her subjects.

I’m so proud to have helped shape and encourage Jerri’s fabric collage artistry. Thank you Jerri, for sharing your impressive collection of quilts with us all.

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Poppin’ Up at Lake Apopka

From Jerri:

Tim Barker’s photo of an American alligator bursting through the surface of Lake Apopka in Florida struck me immediately as a possible subject of a collage quilt. His cocky expression is a little sinister in the photo, but people who’ve seen the quilt say his smile is more benign. The big challenges in this quilt included keeping the alligator visible against a background that is almost the same color and reproducing the splashes where the alligator broke the surface of the lake. I hesitated to attack this at first because I knew it could never compete with Susan’s 20-foot crocodile, but in the end, I had to give it a try.

I do hope Jerri knows her gator and my croc shouldn’t be compared (except as two examples of fabric collage)—they’re two separate individuals after all. Having studied these reptilian heads very closely in the past, I can say that Jeri did I fine job on her specimen. And I think she handled those challenges of hers very well—the lighter color values and bolder prints of the gator’s fabric stand out well against the darker valued solid fabrics of the background—and the splashes and ripples she’s suggested are quite understandable as as well.

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Soft Landing

From Jerri’s blog:

The idea for “Soft Landing,” an egret touching down to rest or hunt for dinner, began with a Facebook post by my friend and former colleague, J.B. Forbes, chief photographer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Jim treats his friends to frequent posts of spectacular photos of birds and other animals in addition those of his charming family.

This quilt won a first place in innovative quilts at the Quilters Anonymous quilt show in 2019 in Monroe, WA.

I have a future blog post idea for how to depict feathers in fabric collage. Many people want to make birds and the first thing they realize is that making feathers is hard. Jerri’s done a good job here. Her use of blue as the color for the shaded portion of the white bird really is very effective.

For more about this quilt read Jerri’s blog post here.

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Urban Interloper

From Jerri’s blog:

When J. B. Forbes posted a picture of a coyote in his yard during a heavy snow last winter, I was stricken by the animal’s predatory stance. Forbes, the chief photographer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is a friend who has given me permission to use his photos as the basis for several quilts.

 

The title of this collage quilt, which I called “Urban Interloper,” could be called into question. After all, is the coyote intruding on the urban landscape or are we intruding on the forest?

We also have coyotes here in Harpswell, Maine. We sometimes hear them out back in a neighbor’s field howling and yipping. Aside from double-checking that our pets are safe and sound, the coyotes’ nocturnal visits are captivating. They are a part of the ecosystem which we humans have upset almost everywhere. You have to admire their ability to adapt to living so close to us.

For more about this quilt read Jerri’s blog post here.

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Beaver Heaven

From Jerri’s blog:

Beavers are brown, and it’s hard to show a lot of shading because so many of the browns are medium values. The photo [I chose] helped me by showing the ear as almost black and some dark areas around the face, feet and tail. The eye is very dark, without a lot of contrast between the cornea and the rest of the eye.

Jerri nails one of the biggest issues beginning fabric collage quilters have when choosing subjects: a lack of variation in value. Lights and darks are what convey shape and form for the viewer. Black cats or dogs, black bears, crows are all wonderful creatures but can be difficult to portray in fabric. The key is to have a good photo to work from, with the right lighting to make their features and contours stand out—just like Jerri was looking for in a photo for this quilt.

For more about this quilt read Jerri’s blog post here.

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Emily’s Smile

From Jerri:

Inspired by a photo my son took of my granddaughter at age 6. Begun in Susan’s retreat in Harpswell, summer of 2016.

 

After using Susan Carlson’s book, Serendipity Quilts, to practice collage quilting for several years, I knew I wanted to go learn from the master. Every year when my husband and family asked what I wanted for Christmas, I told them, I want to take a class with Susan Carlson. Finally, on Christmas morning I got an envelope saying I’d been enrolled in her class in Maine.

I’m always flattered (and feel just a bit of pressure) when I’m told how long and hard someone has waited to take one of my classes. Jerri was a great student and took to the fabric collage process right away—launching into the use of bold color and prints. She worked very hard to get this portrait of her granddaughter just right and got quite far along in class. This quilt may be entitled “Emily’s Smile,” and she’s certainly got a cute little smile, but Jerri’s treatment of Emily’s eyes is captivating.

For more about this quilt read Jerri’s blog post here.

 

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Boy in Blue

From Jerri:

This was the second attempt at a portrait based on a snapshot my sister took of her adorable three-year-old grandson. I chose it because it had a lot of contrast between the two sides of the face. My main challenge was in finding fabrics for the face that had the different values I needed without making it garish. The first attempt appeared to be a photo of a body stripped of skin because of a lot of red used in the shadow side of the face. Unfortunately, no one really likes this one, either, and I have decided to delay any further attempt at this portrait for a while.

I have to hand it to Jerri that she gave this portrait two tries—treating the first as practice, learning from it, and looking back on it with a bit of humor. I like this collage just fine—as in “Emily’s Smile,” Jerri took a chance on bold colors, which always gets a few stars in my book.

For more about this quilt read Jerri’s blog post here.

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Happy Day at Paradise

From Jerri:

Inspired by a snapshot I took of my husband, Mike, after a short hike at Paradise on Mount Rainier.

 

When we moved to Seattle, one of the things we wanted to do after getting settled was to go up to Mt. Rainier National Park to see the wildflowers. My daughter-in-law offered to drive us up with our granddaughter. We had a great day sight-seeing and taking some short hikes, including one to see a waterfall near Paradise, one of the most popular spots in the park.

What a great memory to capture in fabric—and what a great capture of a… cup of iced tea?

For more about this quilt read Jerri’s blog post here.

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Nigel, You Hardly Knew Her

From Jerri:

The Washington Post published an article about an Australasian gannet who adopted a concrete decoy for a potential mate after he settled on an island where New Zealand was trying to attract the birds, who had become nuisances elsewhere. Unfortunately, the gannet, named Nigel by wildlife workers, died about the time other gannets arrived on the island. I wanted to make a quilt about this, but I didn’t have Nigel’s picture. So I made a drawing based on several photos I found online.

The quilt was included in a “Birds of a Feather” exhibit at the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Textile Museum in La Conner, WA, from Jan. 23 to March 3, 2019.

I’ve hear of this bittersweet story as well. A lovely memorial quilt to a lonely bird. It’s a nice example of depicting feathers as well. Rather than making each individual pinion, Jerri used the print in the fabric, especially the black with brown in it and the yellow on the head, to convey the idea of feathers instead. Always good to let the fabric prints do at least some of the work for you, including in the way she treated the rocks and grasses.

For more about this quilt read Jerri’s blog post here.

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Prince of the Forest

From Jerri’s blog:

After I finished Nigel You Never Knew Her, I was looking for a new subject for fabric collage. My friend, Charles Williams, shared an article he wrote for the Enterprise Pursuits magazine about Prince Edward Island. One of his pictures was of a magnificent red fox.

 

Charles said the fox and he “bonded” ”“ or at least the fox wasn’t shy about being photographed. He took quite a few photos, and he agreed to let me try to render the fox as collage.

What a soulful expression Jerri has captured. When my husband Tom saw this fox portrait, he said it reminded him of the fox in “The Little Prince.” A fox that looks like he wants to be tamed, even though he knows it would make him sad in the end.

For more about this quilt read Jerri’s blog post here.

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Lion in Repose

From Jerri:

This original quilt was inspired by a photo my friend Doug Wong, a journalist with the Washington Post, took of a lion at the National Zoo. The lion was sitting on a concrete wall, but I wanted him in a more natural landscape. I found the green background fabric with the trees already in it, but added grasses and rocks as if he were surveying his domain in Africa. I enjoy using flowers and other images in my animal quilts, as in the mane.

The angle of this composition is striking. From our position below the lion, he is even more imposing. Another great use of the prints in fabrics—creating a proud and regal beast, with fanciful flowers entwined in his mane. I love it.

For more about this quilt read Jerri’s blog post here.