Zoom Annotation and Fabric Collage With Susan Carlson: Part 1—Ziggy the Cat

My sister says that I like to work in themes, and she’s right. She’s usually referring to family get-togethers and menu planning—winter smorgasbord potlucks around the firepit, or “Soup Sample Sunday,” or “Chocolate Extravaganza.” These events rarely end up as I imagine since family members tend to roll their eyes, look at each other and say, there she goes again (though they like the chocolate ideas).

You may have noticed that a blog post theme we’ve been pushing for the last month or so is our new live online fabric collage class offerings. Back in February, Tom and I realized there was a window of opportunity this spring for scheduling three live online 5-day classes, three months in a row March through May, due to in-person classes getting cancelled—again. It was an ambitious idea but we felt ready to cross the final t‘s and dot the final i‘s—and the March online class ran just as we had hoped and planned it would.

So my next two Saturday posts will be following up on last week’s post that introduced you to all the ladies and their projects in that mid-March class. This week we’re taking a closer look at one of the student collages, above—the ready-for-quilting Ziggy the cat by Marie Wood. Next week we’ll focus on the completed Roscoe the dog by Kelly Stafford—a “raining cats and dogs” theme for the first two posts of April, get it? 😉 (Feel free to roll your eyes.)

The focus for both will be how Zoom annotation tools can facilitate communication with my online students with everything from drawing the pattern, to fabric selection before and during the process, to discussions about values, fabric placement, and backgrounds. Annotation allows my students and I to talk about and interact with their projects in an immediate and very visible way. Thank you Marie and Kelly for allowing us to share the progress of your pet portraits!

The upcoming April and May online classes are each half filled, but Tom and I have decided to keep them running regardless of minimum enrollment deadlines. We know there are folks around the world who would like to take a class from me, though the opportunity for and expense of travel holds them back. Well, here you go. The virtual world has opened up this past year and my fabric collage teaching is now part of it.

We also looked at my calendar for the rest of 2021, and if the world can just get a handle on the pandemic and travel opens up again, I’ll have in-person classes to get back to—meaning a hold on virtual classes until sometime in 2022. Yes, live online 5-day classes will now be a part of my future teaching schedule, and for this year they’re now, this month and next month. We’re making it happen, now it’s up to you.

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Marie Wood and Ziggy the Cat

I’ve only met Marie online—and Kelly too for that matter—but I feel like I had the opportunity to share the collage process with them in much the same way as in-person during the course of our week of class together. Time with all the students actually began the week before with pre-class coaching sessions. During this one-on-one time, I wanted to check out drawings and fabric selection in particular, so everyone felt prepared for this new way of teaching and learning.

Even before we met for coaching, Marie wrote she was pretty sure there were too many lines in her drawing. Yes, she was right. But in the screen shot above left, I was able to draw on top of both Marie’s photo and drawing of Ziggy to demonstrate how to pick out what the important lines are, and which she can leave out of an edited drawing. The resulting drawing she worked on was exactly what she needed and can be seen under some of her first bits of fabrics she placed on the foundation fabric, above right. Marie even added yellow arrows to the foundation fabric design to indicate the direction of Ziggy’s fur—helpful guidelines as she places more and more fabric.

The photo of Marie’s fabric selection, above, was also discussed at that first meeting, and even came in handy later in the process when I wanted to “paw through” Marie’s fabrics to see what she may have that would work in one area or another of Ziggy’s face. With the annotation tools, I could circle, outline, and check off some ideas—in lieu of pulling out and pointing out the examples. Marie told me that the fabrics in the lower right were ones she selected for his eyes. I circled them so we both knew I was looking at the correct fabrics, and Marie arrived at Day One of class with those eyes cut and placed to give Ziggy some personality from the start.

In the upper left of most of these photos, you can see the student’s name and day listed. Tom kept the submitted photos separated this way so everyone—Tom, myself, and the student—could keep the accumulating photos organized as the week progressed. Each student had their own growing slideshow of sorts, very handy a few times when I wanted to go back in time to reference the image, maybe the original drawing or a previous step, or the fabric selection like I mentioned before.

The screenshot above shows Marie’s progress prior to our afternoon meeting on Day Two. We had talked earlier about Ziggy’s dark “M” markings on his forehead, and how she should get them in place before the drawing was covered with more fabric. The next step in that area was what would be slipped under the marks for his lighter colored fur and you can see some annotations from our discussion about that, among other visual notes.

From Marie:

The online experience was very good since Tom has the technical part of the class down pat. We were able to update our progress by sending in multiple photos so that Susan could see what we were up to and give us timely feedback with discussion and annotations right on our project piece photos. And we were encouraged to (read taught how to) take screen shots of the annotations to refer back to as we were working.

In the photo below, from our afternoon meeting on Day Three, Marie had already slipped a dandelion sort of printed batik under the forehead markings and they looked quite nice. Overall, she had made good progress on Ziggy’s face since the day before. Next for Marie was to continue working out from the center of his face. She had already placed a couple fabrics in one ear so we could discuss them as well during this session.

By the beginning of Day Four, below, Ziggy was becoming a full-fledged cat and the first draft was nearing completion. First draft is covering the foundation fabric as best you can with a variety of fabric bits, but knowing that there will be adjustments and tweaks to come in the second and third drafts. She had also selected fabric for his chest. We took a closer look at Ziggy’s chin and how to soften the straight-cut edge of beige fabric so it would look more “wispy” as in the photo.

From Marie:

The only frustration came as I was working on “Ziggy” and didn’t seem to know where to go next at times. Each time Susan would answer my questions and gently lead me forward in our personalized sessions. A big help was that Susan would give only a few steps forward at a time so we wouldn’t get a sense of being overwhelmed.

Day Five (above and below), dawned with a handsome cat portrait and whiskers on Ziggy’s little “chinny-chin-chin.” They didn’t look quite right for either Marie or I, but it was a step ahead and could always be altered later. If you don’t try out an idea, you’ll never know if it would have worked. Someone famous once said, “knowing what doesn’t work is as important as knowing what does.”

Meanwhile, we talked about how to make his white chest spot appear to be nestled in his fur and not sitting on top of it. Marie had also made the executive decision to change out the fabric on the bridge of his nose. It had been a topic of conversation since early on and I loved the choice Marie made. The new batik had a print that mimicked the short hairs on his nose and the colors in the fabric reflected his yellows and a few pink fabrics Marie used.

By the afternoon of Day Five, Marie was ready to discuss potential background ideas, below left. She had in mind a straight-edged collage background (such as behind my sea turtle from the Sea Turtle eWorkshop) and had picked out a few fabrics to look at with that in mind.

From Marie:

The on-line course was packed with teaching discussions, demonstrations, frequent analysis and suggestions of our own individual fabric collage pieces as we progressed through the week. We all were encouraged and got a lot done every day. I think I got more done than if I was at an in-person class.

 

I am a “hugger” people person and wished I could hug all my newly made friends and to thank Susan and Tom for all they did to make our experience excellent. It was a fantastic week!

When the class gathered together in our Zoom classroom the final evening, Ziggy was presented for our end-of-week show-and-share as above, to many oohs and ahhs. This past week, Marie sent us the photo below—Ziggy ready for quilting! He’s a royal looking beauty. I keep staring at him to pick out the extra details Marie has added in the interim—spirals and dots to add visual and textural interest, and of course, the whiskers cut from the sheer fabric (above right) she found after class had ended. She pointed out that the thinner whiskers are embroidery cording.

Marie had already added pieces of cream lace to Ziggy’s inner ears to mimic his light fluffy ear fur by Day Five of class (I demonstrate the use of sheer fabrics for details on Day Four). Now I saw that she added more lace to increase the light values around his eyes and to help soften his chin line as well. The long chin hairs are gone and replaced with other and better details.

And his background—complementary colors of blues versus his oranges, simple enough to not distract from him, but interesting to look at with the variety of fabrics and shades of blues and greens. It looks like it was fun to arrange and finish up this lovely portrait.

Well done, Marie. Thank you again, and Happy Quilting!