Fabric Collage Finish Line No. 72

As you view and read about more glorious finished collage quilts sent in by others (such as Susan Brier’s sun/moon combo, above), I will have just finished up a week of teaching at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts. Progress has already been impressive and I look forward to sharing the classroom work in a couple weeks. I have no doubt that eventually, these projects will return as submissions for future Finish Line posts.

In the meantime, if you too have a finished fabric collage quilt you would like to share, please use the link below to send in your story and images. I’m constantly inspired by all the shared creativity—thank you!

Submit Quilt for "Finish Line"

And now, please join me as I sip a cuppa and sit back to enjoy the following quilts and their stories. May they fill you with inspiration as well.

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Carol Smith

Carol Smith from Dundee, Scotland did exactly what I suggest all my new students do: start small and work their way up to bigger. Learning from her simpler projects set her up for success in this stunning quilt. The eyes are especially captivating. The luxurious mane makes me want to sink my fingers into it.

From Carol:

I first started dabbling with fabric collage during the first lockdown of 2020. I’ve always been a keen crafter and a lover of anything involving fabric. In my quest for something new to keep me occupied and sane while being housebound during the pandemic I did some idle ‘googling’ and stumbled across examples of Susan’s work. I was captivated from the start. Totally in awe of the amazing quilts that Susan has produced, and thanks to Susan for the helpful online Tutorials I had enough info to have a go. My early attempts at a fish, a penguin and a duck left a lot of room for improvement, partly due to my limited fabric collection at the time (which has now grown enormously!) but mostly due to my inexperience. I have since read every blog post, watched every tutorial and purchased some of the live stream videos, and thanks to Susan my work has progressed considerably.

The most valuable lesson I have learned is the importance of getting the values right. I realized that this was where my early attempts were going wrong. So I now use lots of black and white photographs of my original subject but also of my fabric choices and my work in progress so that I can regularly check in that I have the values correct. In the past 12 months I have completed a number of family portraits and various animal quilts. I have learned so much from Susan, particularly from the lessons focusing on facial features, which I have found valuable not just for human faces but for my animal quilts too. I still have a great deal to learn but I am enjoying the journey immensely. Thank you Susan.

I found the photograph for this quilt from a copyright free website. I have a fascination with animals and particularly like images which show a close up of facial features. I began with selecting fabrics from my stash and organising them according to value. I then purchased a few more pieces to enhance the selection I had. This was quite a challenge with the shops all currently closed – it’s just not the same purchasing fabric on-line! I enhanced the final quilt with a variety of tulle and organza embellishments. The whiskers proved quite challenging – I initially tried stitching the whiskers with the sewing machine but found that they were too thin. So I unpicked them and settled on using some strands of embroidery floss. This worked well as I was able to use a different number of strands depending on how thick I wanted the whiskers to be. I added a small amount of glue to finger and thumb, then ran the strands between them, while twisting gently. This bound the strands together. I then used an inter-dental stick to add a very fine line of glue to the collage and carefully placed the whiskers down. This seemed adequate to keep them perfectly secure but I made sure that my quilting stitches also anchored them down. Finally, I mounted the quilt onto a stretched canvas. I used Susan’s technique of sewing an edging strip around the quilt. I like the shadow effect that this creates when hung on the wall. The quilt now has place of pride in my lounge and I’m looking forward to the next project!

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Beverly Williams

Beverly Williams from Pace, Florida is clearly a self-motivated learner, using only blog posts and my book Serendipity Quilts to educate herself in fabric collage. Beverly identifies some of the most crucial blog posts for learning the basics of fabric collage below. I love how the colors used in this piece mirror the bright colors Florida is famous for.

From Beverly:

I watched a lot of posts by Susan, “Why Color is Irrelevant,” “Why Glue?“, “An Eye for an Eye“, It’s in the details, “Hang it up“, “Making a Pattern“, “The Under-Appreciated fabric collage spiral“, how fabric collage became painting with fabric, and of course the book Serendipity Quilts.

I enjoy going to Pensacola Beach and watching the wildlife. Jubilation was inspired by the brown pelicans in the area. Jubilation, created from textiles, provides the audience an opportunity to determine what the subjects are doing and communicating. Are they talking it up about their fishing experience, having a good belly laugh, or just gossiping? This was so much Fun to create. Thank You Susan for all your inspiration and posts.

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Judy Gates

Judy Gates of nearby South Portland, Maine, sent in this wonderful spiral which she made as the introductory exercise of my Fabric Collage Master Class. She took my (very heavy-handed) hints and started with a spiral as a way to learn about color, value, and the mechanics of fabric collage. Her “Whirlwind” has lots of motion thanks to her use of color and value. To me it looks like there are leaves and other detritus caught up in one of those dust devils, swirling them round and round.

From Judy:

I’ve had Susan’s Serendipity book on my shelf for years but for some reason never felt up to what felt like too creative an undertaking for me. This year I’m determined to embrace color in new, bold ways and finally this felt right, while still daunting. I signed onto the virtual tutorial and took small steps, first grabbing my bags of scraps and snips I’ve been saving for inspiration. Once the colorway spoke to me, I opened my drawers of fabric and added in whatever felt good. I moved onto cutting background fabric (which I didn’t measure to keep with the theme of going with the flow) and drew the spiral. Honestly, I knew I was inspired as soon as the marker hit the muslin.

I’ve always been afraid of yellows and oranges, typically happy in my safe zone of teals and purples. I decided to put one foot in each lane: comfortable and what felt like crazy. The batiks led the way, fussy cutting around leaves, birds, swirls and flowers. I was drawn to start with the warm colors as what I thought would be the harder choice. As the spiral grew, I didn’t want to stop. To my surprise, the yellow, golds and oranges became the dominant spiral. While the individual pieces are small, the combine effect is energizing. Batiks dominate as the fabric choice.

I wasn’t certain I wanted to use tulle but decided to be all in. I tried bright teal, soft teal, black and black with a sparkle. I opted for the sparkle-another surprise-cutting crescents away with abandon. The free motion quilting was the most intimidating part (besides starting to begin with!). I’d never done it before so had steel my nerves to set up my machine with the metallic, multicolored thread. I felt brave and wild and I loved it.

I’m so happy with this and am itching to see more visions dancing in my head come to life through fabric collage. Once it’s mounted onto stretcher bars, This will hang at the foot of my bed to remind me first thing in the morning and last thing at night that even when life is a whirlwind of the unexpected, it is beautiful.

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Mary McKay

Mary McKay is from the sunny and very warm Palm Desert, California. This image of her grandson in the pool reflects that atmosphere. The colors and novelty fabrics (can you find the cars?) give the piece a lighthearted, warm and cheerful impression. I worked with Mary a number of times on this piece, which is a result of much hard work and persistence on her part. Way to go, Mary!

From Mary:

My grandson came to visit in April, 2020 during the Pandemic. It was an epic outside pool day and I took lots of photos.

I wanted to make another quilt and I wanted to try making a human face. About the time I realized I was in way over my head, Susan began offering coaching. It was exactly what I needed. Zoom provided an opportunity to talk/work on it and her nifty computer skills allowed her to show me what to change and how to improve. I had taken one in person class with Susan. This Spring, I took two online courses and I was able to finish The Swimmer. I am thrilled with it and now I am plotting on my next victim…subject.

It was gloriously quilted for me by Andrea Elliott. Thank you, Susan and my classmates.

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Susan Brier

Susan Brier of Hendersonville, NC, learned fabric collage from my book, Serendipity Quilts (as you can see below: that’s the open book in her photos). It seems coincidental to me, but it appears that Susan was NOT inspired by my pair of live presentations (now available as recordings here and here) where I did just what she has done, adapted my sun and moon patterns to include real faces of real people. Well done, Susan.

From Susan:

My latest fabric collage piece is a 21” space hanging (it floats in the air, catty-corner, so it’s not quite a ‘wall hanging!’). My first attempt at Susan Carlson’s technique was a simple spiral. So it might have been a bit of a jump to have my next project be a modified self portrait of my husband and I! Here is how it happened….

Many years ago, Scott and I traveled to Venice and brought back one of those papier-mâché masks of the moon gazing at the sun. Over many years, I started to think of Scott as that protective moon, and, (quite presumptuous!) me as a sun. I drew out my perception of that idea and let the fabric quilt process take it away! I used a lot of invisible thread on the two faces, some black tulle to make Scott’s mustache and beard (which trails off his face) and a lot of spiral galaxies as the quilting of the background.