Before we take a four week break from creating new blog posts (you’ll still receive Saturday posts, just not a new ones—think of it like old time TV when they went into summer reruns—remember those?), we thought we’d leave you with some fabric collage inspiration from followers around the country (and the world) to tide you over.
This new batch of Fabric Collage Finish Line quilts is fantastic, as usual. With a portrait, pets, a flower, a bird, a landscape, and large animals. I don’t play favorites with quilts, but I am blown away by Laura Graham’s award-winning portrait of her daughter “Wild Child,” seen above. As a beginner to art quilting her achievement is even more impressive.
Starting next week, if the four Summer Rerun Saturdays and Throwback Thursdays don’t hold your attention until mid-August, you can always search the blog for stuff you may have missed or want to view again. Plus there’s the step-by-step Spiral and Sea Turtle eWorkshops as start-to-finish fabric collage projects.
Also, we now have twelve episodes of Thursday Night in My Studio Live! (just visit the front page of the website to choose.) That’s over twelve hours of fabric collage talk, demos, and slide shows. So if you feel like you’re lacking a fabric collage fix, you aren’t trying hard enough! 😉
While Tom and I chip away at our own home-based summer projects (including a major Fabric Collage Online Master Class Manual overhaul), we hope that you can take some of the ideas presented above and play a bit with fabric collage (something on my to-do list as well!).
We invite you to send us photos and descriptions of any “adventures in fabric collage” you’re up to lately through the contact page on my website: susancarlson.com/contact. They don’t have to be completed quilts, or for that sake, even fabric collage—we’re open to any creative distractions that are helping you through these uncertain times. We’ll gather them together for a late summer blog post. Who knows, your ideas may help someone else in the world cope as well.
Stay healthy and safe, and see you next week in rerun mode (We’ve picked out some oldies but goodies!)—Susan and Tom
Laura Graham
You would never know from her work that Laura Graham from Burntisland in Fife, Scotland is new to fabric collage, but she has all the fervent enthusiasm of a recent convert! Tom called me over to see the picture of her piece the minute it arrived via email. We were gobsmacked (a.k.a. impressed)! Just as important to me, it seems that fabric collage has provided a vital outlet for Laura to express her creativity. Even had the work not turned out as expertly as it did (her use of fabric prints, colors, and values are spot-on), the evident joy she takes in the technique is a great reward to me.
From Laura:
I stumbled across art quilting quite by accident, struggling with traditional designs but loving the whole creative journey with fabric. Susan’s blog was recommended to me on Facebook and I quickly purchased Serendipity Quilts and devoured it. Since then (about 1 year ago) my life has been quickly turned upside down, with an art quilting vocation that I am so passionate about. Thank you Susan.
My youngest daughter is a gregarious whirlwind, so funny and carefree but she pauses for flowers. I knew that I wanted to capture that inner peace that came over her in those moments but didn’t really know how to begin. The fabric choices are always so endless but I remembered “polka dodo” and how a print could tell the story (plus narrowing the selection!) so I used botanical prints and hues.
As this was my first attempt at collage quilting I had cobbled together some wadding [batting] sellotaped to a cutting mat, tied onto a music stand! I know, not ideal, but it got me started and I really enjoyed beginning the face…at the beginning.
I soon landed smack in the middle of the messy scary stage and stopped, for a whole month. What eventually drew me back in was choosing to make her coat an entirely different colour. This allowed me to create the strong contrast I was really desperate for but hadn’t really seen how to do. I then really enjoyed myself and studied a lot of “Monarch Maia” to help me create a really textured curly hair. My daughter is well known for her wild ringlets so it was ideal to use flowers and vines for these.
I had always wanted to enter a quilt show but never EVER thought I would. My explosion into collage quilting gave me the confidence to give it a go—so my wild child went off to the Scottish Quilting Show in March 2020 and came second place in the art quilt category. If I wasn’t hooked enough, I’m now enrolled on my city and guilds patchwork&quilting diploma, member of the UK guild, and beavering away on her sisters portrait. Thankfully I only have the two children…
I benefitted from constantly taking photos of my work and studying what needed altering. it’s amazing how much more objective you are when looking at a photo rather than the work in front of you. I learnt that from Susan and reading tips from others on finish line quilt submissions. I enjoy free motion quilting but tried to keep it organic and swirly, straight lines definitely don’t work and draw your eyes away from the image. I had to add a border to meet the minimum size requirements for the show entry. I enjoyed seeing this style of ”˜picture frame’ border when searching online. I quilted it with a ”˜tree bark’ effect, or tried to!
Judy Morganthall
Judy Morganthall from Waxhaw, North Carolina worked on this quilt in my class at Art Quilt Tahoe in November 2019 after starting it based on instructions from my book “Serendipity Quilts.”
What a pleasure to see this quilt finished. Judy was one of those amazingly attentive students who, as she says below, took this piece through “several transformations.” (I also identify with her comment about having taken “several thousand photos” on her trip.) She had questions for me every time I came around to check on progress—pertaining to her drawing, fabric, values, eyes—her determination to learn this process was palpable. She absolutely caught the expressiveness and wrinkled contours of this baby elephant. Beautiful job, Judy—what a great memory quilt.
From Judy:
My quilt started with a photo I took in August 2019 in South Africa on the Sabi Sands Game Reserve. “Sabi” was sitting in the bright afternoon sun. I chose my elephant from several thousand photos because he seemed as interested in me as I was in him.
This was my first glued collage. Several areas (jaws, shadows, etc.) went through several transformations. I also used about a dozen colors of tulle. And Susan’s lesson on eyes really helped me bring him to life. It was a time-consuming obsession, and when I parted with him (it) to enter the quilt in the Charlotte Quilters Guild March 2020 show, I felt like I was sending a kid to camp! Sabi won second place in the pictorial category. Judges said “great use of fabric to create a light source.” It was fun watching people at the show study my quilt.
Funny story. Judy happened to be in attendance two days ago, for the Thursday Night in My Studio Live! Zoom presentation, just before this blog posted. The evening was all about using netting and tulle as a final step in adding interest to your background. In the Q&A window Judy said she was “eternally grateful for that orange spider web dot swatch for my elephant’s eyes!” She reminded me that she had found a shiny touch for the highlight of Sabi’s eye in a novelty tulle I had brought along to class (note the layers of construction in the eye detail below—beautiful!).
Noëlla Grenier
When Noëlla Grenier of Winipeg, Manitoba, Canada sent in the picture of the quilt above, Tom and I frankly had to take a moment to decide whether it was an example of fabric collage. But as Noëlla explained, this quilt was a response to her Manitoba Prairie Guild challenge for an auction which set strict limits on the types and numbers of fabrics to be used. The construction is a glued top, so, it’s fabric collage!
I commend her creation of a dramatic Aurora Borealis within that limited pallet—I hope you keep going with the process, Noëlla—how about a challenge for another northern lights collage with let’s say, a dozen or so fabrics of your own choosing? A little summertime project? You have some pretty long days this time of year to work on it!
From Noëlla:
We were given the three fabrics that represent my sky and told to create a quilt, of a given size. We could include up to five fabrics of our own to complete the project we chose. I happen to come across some photos of northern lights and decided my lime green would be perfect. I rough drew an outline on a cotton fabric and started the process. I used your method of glueing my pieces until I got the outcome I liked. I stitched around every piece and then made my sandwich, then completed the quilt with the wavy top stitching.
Jane Benik
Jane Benik of Eden Prairie, MN says she has long followed my work, reading the blog and purchasing “Serendipity Quilts.” She tried unsuccessfully to get into one of my classes, and finally got into a class this November in Wisconsin, which has now been COVID-cancelled. With such a wonderful pet-portrait under her belt (she’s certainly done some homework!), I’m so sorry not to see her in a class this year. Maybe in 2021… (fingers crossed).
In the meantime, Jane, the “firsts” of this quilt are fantastic—now you need to work on another quilt for your list of “seconds.” Funny how you’d say that the mouth and chin gave you the most trouble, you’d think it would have been the eyes or nose—both of which are great (dog noses can be more trouble than you’d think). I can tell that you really “looked” at your Sweet Lucy—she has a personality that makes me smile.
From Jane:
This quilt encompasses a number of firsts for me. I have done fabric collage before but this quilt is the first time I used Susan’s gluing technique and really enjoyed using it. This quilt is the largest animal collage I have done to date. This quilt is the first time I really let loose on color and let value do a lot of the work. I loved using many different Kaffe and aboriginal fabrics. This quilt is the first time I was focused on providing visual interest when looking at it up close. Lucy’s mouth and chin gave me my biggest challenge in terms of getting the value correct. It went through many do overs until I feel I got it right.
Kathleen Howard
Kathleen Howard Santa Cruz County, California says she was first inspired to learn fabric collage after seeing my “Specimens” Quilt Show at at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. She learned through my books and also the Fabric Collage Online Master Class.
Good for Kathleen to push out of her comfort zone into the world of fabric collage—and for taking to heart what I say about keeping going when you hit the “messy scary stage.” I love her thoughts as she worked on this piece. Yes, most submissions we receive are creatures and not flowers—I’m sure part of that is my influence—I enjoy (and promote) creating the personality of subjects with a face. But Kathleen has managed to give this flower a personality—just look at the details below—that’s uniqueness and individuality—even in a flower. I’ve seen these poppies blooming in my California teaching travels, and she’s certainly caught their cheerful hopefulness. Thanks for the reminder, Kathleen.
From Kathleen:
I live on rural property in Santa Cruz County, CA. Every year the California Poppies are a sign of Spring–bringing with them the fawns, the bobcat I saw on my road last week, the quail, and the rest of the wonderful signs of life around me. Especially this year, as the world struggles with life and death, it was important to me to finish this quilt as a message of hope to myself. I know that animals and people are a more frequent subject of these quilts, and that this quilt is less whimsical and more realistic in color, but it was what I wanted to do. My whimsical animal will come next. I loved the process. I definitely hit the messy “this will never look good” phase, but pressed on because Susan says, in the class, that this will happen and to forge ahead. It was a good first step into a process that is out of my comfort zone, for sure!
Kay Morse
Kay Morse of Sanibel, Florida, made this quilt using instruction from the Fabric Collage Master Class. She has a perfect story for the background behind her cute pup. A good reminder that if you get stuck trying to figure out a background, think about the “story” of the subject, it may lead you in a direction for colors and fabrics that may not have occurred to you otherwise.
I’m happy to share the “lure of colorful fabrics,” and substituting the tropical prints for plain ol’ grass is a great way to enhance the story of Finn’s new home. I absolutely love the playfulness of the raining limes!
From Kay:
This photo is of our black lab, Phinneas, when he was just 2 months old lounging in the grass at our daughters home in Texas. We brought him to Sanibel shortly after and he loves his island home! Key limes and Key lime pie are popular in our area and when I saw Kaffe Fassett’s new fabric with green limes on it I knew it had to be included in some way! The lush greenery (more Fassett) seemed more appropriate to our area than the grass and was great fun to work in.
The lure of colorful fabrics, imaginative ways of putting them together, and your positive creative approach has made it so much fun!!
Lizzie Stebbins
I remember well Lizzie Stebbins (from Jefferson, here in the great state of Maine)—and her cheerful rescue donkeys. She attended my class in Harpswell in October, 2019. Their portrait is entitled “Romeo and Juliet” and they do indeed look as though they are in love.
Lizzie had completed a few collage projects prior to attending the class, and she was ready to get going on this one. If I remember correctly, one of her big decisions was the fabric selection, making sure the definition between the two donkeys was clear. A cool palette of blues and greens for Romeo, and a warm selection of yellows and oranges for Juliet, made a nice complementary contrast between the two. The fabrics Lizzie used for their tussled fur is perfect.
Be sure to click on any of these photos (and others in the post), to see the details that have been worked into these collages.
From Lizzie:
I first saw Susan’s quilts at the Maine Quilts show and immediately fell in love. I bought her book, Serendipity Quilts, and started with the spiral, became a patron and received my free pattern of the sea turtle. I finished that and when new classes were announced, I managed to get on the waitlist for the 2019 Harpswell, Maine Retreat. And I got in!!
I must have spent 100 hours looking at different images, trying to decide what my project for Susan’s class would be. I printed pictures of red foxes, llamas, pelicans, goats, and on and on, until I stumbled across a website for The Donkey Sanctuary in County Cork, Ireland. I was immediately taken with these beautiful creatures and the dedication of the volunteers who cared for them. They have loved and cared for abandoned donkeys from across Ireland since 1987 and every donkey taken into the sanctuary is guaranteed a life of loving care. For many, it is the first time in their lives that they have felt loving hands and heard quiet voices. Great care is given to ensuring that each donkey has individual attention. Suitable, fit donkeys may be found homes through their rehoming scheme and those needing more intensive care and ongoing veterinary treatment become permanent residents. I saw this one sweet image and got in touch for permission to use the photo. They were more than happy to allow me to use it with the proviso I share pictures of the finished quilt with them. I believe the original caption of the photo was something like Cap and Pal but in class, Susan named them Romeo and Juliet and that is how I think of them now.
I love the collage process and can’t wait to take another class. I think the most difficult part for me is the quilting as I do not have a lot of experience with machine quilting and it seems that no matter how diligent I think I am with the gluing, there are still little pieces just lying in wait to snag my needle. I’m currently working on a pelican—in between sewing masks.
Pat Armstrong
Pat Armstrong from Prescott, Arizona, didn’t have to travel too far to attend my class in Tucson, Arizona in January 2019. In that class she started a collage of a woodpecker, which is featured in this Finish Line blog post. The quilt above, however, she started on her own, which is based on a picture she took at the San Antonio Zoo.
In that AZ class, Pat had first thought to work on a crane with a water reflection, which would have been an ambitious first collage subject. Now I see that Pat would have handled it just fine—her treatment of the water in this quilt is beautiful and I love how she positioned the swans in the upper half of the quilt, giving an interesting division in the visual texture of the water. This is lovely, Pat—I hope you now go back to that crane for your next fabric collage.
From Pat:
I immediately fell in love with the black swans and their movements. As I watched them I could feel the love and devotion they showed each other. The water was a real challenge to create, trying to capture some movement and ripples.
Lizzie Stebbins, I was at the same retreat and remember them from the beginning, they have turned out fantastic! Love the colors!