Fabric Collage Finish Line: Online Submissions 17

We’d like to welcome Winter with a wonderful collection of Finish Line quilts from around the world—enjoy immersing yourself in their color and celebration. The Winter Solstice falls on this coming Monday, and I wish you warmth and comfort in this season. And a wish for a beautiful and bright Summer Solstice to my readers in the Southern Hemisphere.

I am continually gratified by how versatile fabric collage proves, as shown by this week’s contributions. Whether you want to create a realistic animal (Erika Shoegl’s lynx), a color-saturated portrait (Rosy Petri’s Mardi Gras Indian chief), an impressionistic landscape (Shirley Peters’ Stonehenge-like monument, above), or playful “mounted” sport fish (by Cheri Artz), and beautifully blended fish by Susan Mastry, fabric collage is up to the challenge. Ladies, thank you for your submissions and stories.

Each of these artists have their own unique approach to learning fabric collage. Some followed the blog and learned piecemeal, picking up bits here and there. Others took a more structured approach by purchasing my book “Serendipity Quilts” or the Fabric Collage Online Master Class Manual.

Whatever your path, fabric collage can take you as far as you want to go in your artistic journey.

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Erika Schoegl

Erika Schoegl, who lives near Gmunden, Austria, created this “lynx” (note those long black ear tufts). She learned fabric collage from my book and by following this blog. I was charmed by how Erika said that after following the blog for a while, “the wish to give it a try grew bigger and bigger.” And I’m absolutely impressed at this first fabric collage quilt of hers, and congratulations on your first place ribbon Erika, it’s well deserved.

And thank you for documenting your thoughts and process in such a concise and interesting way. Great description of how you developed the background as well. Your choices help to tell the story of this endangered species.

From Erika [lightly edited]:

The special category in our national quilt show this year was titled “National Park” and I wanted to enter a quilt of a lynx, because it is such a beautiful creature that had been extinct here a long time and now there are many efforts made to make it settle down in our national parks again. I got the permission to use a photo and began my adventure in fabric collage. I chose to stay with the natural colors, because I thought I couldn’t do justice to the delicate patterned cat otherwise with my fabric stash. Following the instructions of the blogposts, the beginning was rather easy—eye, nose and ears were quickly pinned. Getting the right values in the following parts was much more difficult, I can’t count how many times I pinned up a section to remove it the next day. Sometimes it looked more like a squirrel than a lynx. It was frustrating but I was determined to go ahead. When I compared the photo with other pictures, I saw that I could go with much more saturated browns and it worked out much better.

Landscape format was required and I had followed Susan’s instruction to choose a profile shot for first fabric collage. But the pose was unspectacular and I had problems making an interesting background. First option was a beautiful striped batik that looked like a sky after sunset surrounded by a emerald green frame of trees, but it “cut” the significant ears and the pose of the lynx looked just odd. Then I developed a pattern of tree-shaped triangles where I could play with values of green to create focus on the head and finally I added some grass and autumnal leaves to give the lynx a ground to sit on. I quilted it with some matching colors and chose to do a small binding to finish it. It got much attention at the quilt show and won first prize in the category. I love how it came out but I want to move on to a more loose take on colors and fabric in another one hopefully.

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Rosy Petri

Rosy Petri of Wisconsin has created a colorful and stylized portrait that I immediately knew was a reveler in a Mardi Gras parade. After reading her description, I know who this man is—and he is beautiful. Rosy used the colors and prints of her fabrics to capture the essence of the Indian chief, his costume, embellishments, energy and even movement. I can almost hear zydeco music in the background.

Rosy is a Fabric Collage Master Class scholarship recipient, which she mentions below. She has taken her fabric art skills to a wonderful level and I’m humbled to have played a part in that—thank you Rosy, and congratulations on your achievements. Tom and I offer two monthly scholarships as a way to pay forward the generosity given to us from our Patreon supporters. Last month we received a generous donation to the scholarship fund for our 5-year blog anniversary, and were able to add five extra recipients for the month. Kindness is fluid.

From Rosy:

Susan’s piece, “Dixie Dingo Dreaming” captured my imagination, and led me down the path to exploration. I ended up joining an artist program and committing the better part of a year to working on fabric portraits. Since then, I’ve completed a prestigious residency program and have been selected recently as an artist of the year in my city. I’m really grateful to Susan for such a well-crafted master class, and for her kindness in providing a scholarship. It actually changed my life.

I was dreaming of New Orleans, and found a photograph of Big Chief Beautiful of the Creole Apache Mardi Gras Indians in Mike Hartnett’s Instagram page. The photo stuck with me, so I asked if he would be ok with me doing it as a piece. I contacted Big Chief Beautiful as well, and everyone was on board.

Shortly after completing the sketch, I was asked to participate in an art show, so Big Chief Beautiful was finished in about a week, and is headed to the Portrait Society Gallery for a fiber show opening later this week.

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Shirley Peters

Shirley Peters of the U.K. is the second European contributor to this week’s collection of Finish Line quilts. I enjoyed reading that my crocodile quilt led Shirley into fabric collage, but in such a completely different direction of subject matter—maybe it’s an appreciation of massive objects. I Knew i was looking at balanced rocks, but I had to look up what a dolmen is. It’s a megalithic portal tomb, this one dating from 3500 BC. Very cool. Shirley rendered these massive stones beautifully. They have visual weight and a uniqueness in the way she caught their lights and shadows.

From Shirley Peters:

This was made from a photo sent to me by another quilter in Ireland, after she saw another Dolmen I had quilted. I have your book and follow your emails regularly after seeing your Crocodile.

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Cheri Artz

Cheri Artz is from Taylors, SC, is a recent follower of the blog, but she’s already caught on to a great quality of fabric collage—it’s very forgiving of mistakes. Don’t like something after all? Pull up the piece of fabric, or cover it up, add more of something else. Great job on this irregular edged quilt, Cheri—nice curve to that tail, and kudos to the Hobby Lobby lady for her hanging suggestion.

Cheri says that seeing student work, both finished and in progress, was helpful to her. Well, she was certainly inspired to create this fellow. I have a special fondness for fish imagery myself, and much of it is exactly as Cheri says, “It’s a great way to use up some of those fabrics I’ve been collecting.” And that, she certainly did.

Be sure to click on these and any photos to see them larger.

From Cheri:

We recently re-did a room in our house in blues and greens. We had a big blank wall that I thought needed a fish. Let me explain: We live on a lake in SC, and we are constantly finding fishing lures and bobbers as we kayak around the lake. We have collected them, and they are in one of those lamps for collectibles. It’s kind of tacky, but also kind of fun. I thought a fish would be a fun way to pull together the blues & greens with that pop of orange to pick up the bobbers in our lamp. Now, I have been quilting for almost 40 years, and we have quilts all over the house, but somehow a quilt just didn’t seem like quite the right thing here.

I struggled about whether to put him on a background, but your blog about backgrounds arrived in my in-box at just the right time. The questions you asked were very helpful for helping me to see that no, it just needs to be a plain fish. But how does one hang a non-quilt, quilted fish? After quilting my fish (I still haven’t figured out a name for him yet), and cutting him out, I ended up zig-zagging around the edge. At the suggestion from the lady at Hobby Lobby, I mounted him on foam core with straight pins and hung him with Velcro Command strips. We are very pleased with the results. I really enjoyed the process of collage. It’s so easy to “fix” things that aren’t quite right. I even “fixed” part of the fish after I had quilted some of it. I will be doing more of this collage. It’s a great way to use up some of those fabrics I’ve been collecting. Thank you so much for providing your blogs, videos, photos, etc. They are so helpful and inspiring. I can’t wait to do my next collage project! (Still trying to figure out what that will be.)

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Susan Mastry

As someone who has made a lot of fish quilts over the years, I’m impressed by these fishy fabric collages by Susan Mastry of Palmetto, Florida. They’re realistic looking fish, injected with playful touches of color—jewel-like qualities on lovely specimens. Susan must have been following me for quite some time since she mentions my first book, Free-Style Quilts, published in 2000, with a focus on creating… fish! To this day, I recommend fish as perfect subject matter for fabric collage—there’s endless variation possible in their shapes, colors, and patterns. Susan, you have a beautiful style with these quilts, and I love the titles too.

From Susan:

I seem to have zeroed in on creating colorful fish, as my husband was an avid fisherman. This was my first big attempt creating the collage quilts. (Actually, my young granddaughter and I would spend many happy hours creating small wall hangings from Susan’s first book, Free-Style Quilts.). Susan freed me to create without the confines of the dreaded quarter inch and restricted forms! I worked in accounting, and the creative process is very difficult for me, but I do love it! Backgrounds are my nemesis.

From Susan:

After successfully completing my first “biggie” and learning from my mistakes, I tried creating this roosterfish (above). I use batiks and hand dyes almost exclusively. I haven’t yet learned to use lots of contrasting fabrics, preferring to “blend” from one area to another. I think it’s the left brain-right brain battle!

From Susan:

Original design (above). This is fish number three. I hit a roadblock (a not infrequent occurrence!) and it sat ignored for months. I was stumped how to continue. Then my granddaughter, Ella, sent me a photo of her grouper catch of the day, and it was exactly the inspiration I needed. An old grouper, pulled from the rocks in Tampa Bay…. again, order prevailed in the background.