Fabric Collage Faces from Thursday Night in My Studio Live!

These in-progress faces were submitted by invitation as the second series of my new Thursday Night in My Studio Live! was wrapping up at the end of May.

This series of presentations was all about how to approach the facial features of eyes, nose, and mouth. My demos began with using a template of a generic face as a guide to create a portrait in an improvisational and low-stress way (see photo above from the first week’s presentation). The face template has features placed proportionately with “just enough” detail to get started, but not enough to hinder spontaneity and playfulness. A pdf version of the template was available to attendees—and is now included in the purchase of any or all of the four recorded sessions.

Attendees were invited to submit any faces inspired by these Thursday Night sessions for sharing in a future blog post. Since a large part of this series was to spur creativity and have some fun playing with faces, I decided they didn’t have to be finished. Not everything needs to get finished, sometimes you just need a prompt. Sometimes it’s enough to try something different, which then unlocks a part of your brain and gives you new ideas to pursue. And that’s good too.

I figured this Thursday Night face post would pull together later in the summer, but in just two weeks we got enough submissions to send them out to share with you—a big thank you to the inspired ladies who jumped right into these portraits.

If there’s more of you out there who are inspired by any of the Thursday Night at My Studio Live! sessions, and would like to share something of what you learned, please click here to submit—and thank you as well!

Submit Quilt for "Finish Line"

Take care everyone.

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Barb Grant

Years ago, Barb Grant was in one of my Empty Spools classes at Asilomar State Park in Pacific Grove, California. Then she was in another class of mine, another year. It may have been between those classes that she and her husband Irv, traveled to Maine for one of my Harpswell retreats. In my class or not, I see her every year when I return to Asilomar to teach, Barb and Irv live just down the road. I’m lucky she’s such a cool person and fun to be around. It didn’t take long for Barb to become a dear friend of mine—and Irv too.

I missed seeing both of them this March when the Empty Spools conference was cancelled and Asilomar closed down. But Barb has been attending the Thursday Night presentations, and at this moment in time when we have to find alternative ways of operating, it pleases me to think of her on the other end of the Zoom conference. I can picture her smiling face listening oh so attentively.

Since I know Barb fairly well, I can say that she’s really thrown herself into this project, and I love it. It makes me smile just like she does. I thought it was a great idea to take one fabric—with obviously a variety of pattern changes and color variations—to make this face. Barb must have been paying attention in those classes, notice how she separated and grouped the cool (shadowed) and warm (highlight) colors on either side of the face to give a value change. I liked hearing how she saw it as an experiment, ’cause you never know where a little playtime will lead you. Barb, I hope this takes you in some new directions, or at least leads you to another good idea or two.

From Barb

I believe sheltering in place has had some hidden benefits, for example having time to view and learn from your video presentations. I learned so much. They were terrific. I could review [the recordings] numerous times! Soooo, I embraced the face challenge and went slightly crazy. Let me introduce, “Candida at Carnaval”. I have a wonderful, colorful fabric I’ve been saving for something special. So Miss Candida is collaged from that one bright fabric. What a challenge! I learned so much just studying your lessons. Plus, it was a fun experiment.

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Brenda Caswell

I have to say, all these faces got me smiling. Brenda’s face is like the personification of Summertime—it’s chock-full of flower and leaf prints, and she’s done such a nice job of using the patterns to blend from one color to the next. Lovely. By the way, Happy Summer Solstice to those in the Northern Hemisphere. Readers in the Southern Hemisphere, Happy Winter Solstice, and I invite you to send me a winter face!

Reading Brenda’s write-up I had a momentary start. Brenda began a sentence with, “I’ve cut off her left ear…,” and my mind immediately jumped to Vincent van Gogh! But no, she’s going for chic hairstyle instead of a bandage. Whew! Now I can’t wait to see where Brenda will take this!

From Brenda:

Here is my face in progress. I’ve cut off her left ear as she will have a modernized hairstyle, short on the right and covering her ear on the left. This is addictive! Thanks for the instructions and inspiration!

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Sandy Zube

What a great start Sandy has on this face. She really nailed the eyes, they’re mesmerizing. Notice how the whites of the eyes are not perfectly white and the one on the right is darker because it is in shadow—and all the eyelash details…. So much to look at already.

Sandy says she’s working toward creating “real” faces—I think she’s already doing it. Giving herself the freedom to use color, pattern, and “whimsy” in a practice face has maybe allowed her to use fabrics she wouldn’t otherwise consider realistic? I’m all for using non-realistic colors and all sorts of prints in creating realism. I think that by the time this face is done, it’s going to look like someone, just maybe no one that Sandy has met. What fun to see this face progress.

From Sandy:

Here is my face to date. I wanted a chance to submit it. I am challenged with the process and wanting to add too much whimsy. I am preparing to do real faces. I love faces. Thank you both for all you do to bring all this fun to us. I have truly loved every minute of these workshops.

Sandy recently sent in an updated version of her face:

This face has been glued and reglued oh so many times. I followed the class and already submitted an in progress but then did not like the nose. I went through four different noses. I am practicing or warming up before I do a picture of my awesome grandson.”‹

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Lynne Hummel

Lynne Hummel of Rockaway, NJ, has named her collage, “Pixie,” and I think she’s right on the nose with that one—what a cutie this is. What I’m loving so much with these faces is how loose and unplanned they look. It’s exactly what I was hoping to get across in the presentations, and you ladies picked up on it. You get an A+ on your homework, Lynne!

This face has such a warmth and earthiness about it, that it could be a portrait of a summer nymph—especially with the bee and honeycomb fabrics tucked in place. It also has a very impressionistic look about it, with dabs of fabric instead of dabs of paint—a beautiful job, Lynne. I’m glad the colors took you where they did, I can’t imagine this with any other fabrics than what you used. I’ll be interested to see what the rest of her story will be.

From Lynne:

I’ve been taking your Thursday night collage tutorials and this is my “ homework.” I have been following your blog and your website for some time and previously completed a couple small fabric collages on my own. The format of the Thursday classes has really worked well for me but I had to force myself to jump in and try to put it into practice while it is still fresh in my mind.

I got out a wide variety of fabrics and colors to work with including reds, pinks, and yellows but once I started, I only used a few colors, focusing more on value than color. I look forward to your classes on background to see where this goes.

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Alicia Payne

Alicia from Colorado Springs, Colorado, sent me the first image (above left) to ask if she was on the right track. I said she definitely was!! She has a great touch with the designs and colors in her fabrics. And then in a follow-up photo, she’s added some lovely dark values to the shadowed side of the face. A real personality is emerging.

I’m planning on a fourth series of Thursday Night in My Studio presentations later this summer that will cover necks and hair, but Alicia has jumped ahead with a beautiful neck and some tendrils of hair appearing at the hairline. In her quote below, Alicia says it’s been a struggle—but yes, keep going Alicia, you’re getting it!

From Alicia:

Can’t wait for the eyes. It’s been a struggle but I keep keeping on. The nose still isn’t right. Still a work in progress.

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Julie Peterson

I’ve had the pleasure of Julie attending two of my Maine retreats. She picks varied subject matter, first an old rusty tractor in 2018  and then a lovely gap-toothed portrait of her granddaughter in 2019. Julie is not afraid of color with a pink tractor and a yellow-green granddaughter, and she embraced the face challenge this year.

I’m definitely a “more is better” type of person when it comes to fabric collage, and Julie has filled this face with layer upon layer of texture—what fun! There’s going to be a lot of gluing , but it’ll be well worth it in the end. I particularly love the eyes—a great example of finding what you need in your fabrics—such as “built-in” highlights. Keep it up, Julie.

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Laurie Mutalipassi

When I was encouraging attendees to give a face a try, I did say that if the face template design didn’t inspire them, to try another face, the sun design from my book Serendipity Quilts, being readily available in the book or from my website. Laurie from Westminster, CA, took me up on that offer.

Laurie took her first class from me last year at Empty Spools Seminars in Pacific Grove, CA , where she created a fantastic red panda, which you can see in a Finish Line post here. This year she “attended” all  four weeks of Thursday Night face presentations. I noticed that this sun and the red panda have similar colors—though the the red panda doesn’t have fun eyes cut from blackberry and blueberry fabric, another nice “built-in” eye-highlight find.

From Laurie:

This quilt is my first try at doing a person’s face. I have done a Red Panda. In the future I would like to try doing faces of my young grandchildren.

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Tamara Milostan

I’m going to finish up this post of fun and intuitive faces with a “garden man” from Tamara Milostan. She used a photo of her cement garden sculpture as inspiration, rather than the face template or sun pattern that others used. The important thing is that she used a face that wasn’t anyone in particular. Without personal attachment, she could let it go in it’s own way and have the fun of seeing what develops. And according to Tamara, this guy did go his own way.

From Tamara about the photo above:

This is the phase you call [first draft], all the white is covered. Now to add lots of finishing touches. This garden man has already taken a path of his own as he does not look like what I envisioned.

Then yesterday, we received the comments and photo below—Tamara finished her Garden Man! Congratulations on following his lead, Tamara—maybe he should be your Garden Muse.

Here is the finished version after asking for suggestions on Susan’s Master Class Facebook page*. Great suggestions were offered. I would just add to my other comments that I have wanted to do a less realistic collage for some time now using colors and patterns the way you do so freely. When your series of classes popped up, I felt it was the right time. I started with the nose and eyes and mouth, and then he kinda took off in his own direction and I followed.

(*A private group page for owners of the Fabric Collage Master Class Manual)