January in Maine is a good time to stay nice and cozy inside at home—even better with a new collage project. However, my job for January was to get a class-full of other collage quilters going on their new fabric collage projects. What a great eight days (includes the days of pre-class coaching) seeing their chosen images emerge from the design boards (such as Kona, above, by Cheryl Olsson). How very satisfying it all was.
I’ve always had the goal or at least aspiration to reach the people that can’t make it to an in-person class. Whether because of expense, health issues, family circumstances, or whatever, many people have contacted me saying they would love to attend a class but just can’t travel.
In a sliver of a silver lining regarding the pandemic, it has given me the time and motivation to develop these online classes to the point where I can say they’re equal to the in-person version. They are different experiences, certainly, but the results below speak for themselves.
As one student from this class said: “The only thing missing was the ability to snatch a small piece of fabric from a classmate!”
As usual, for this class we divided students into three breakout rooms. When grouping, I consider their subject matter, fabric collage experience, and/or their relationships to each other. For instance, friends will sign up together, and this time the class included my first mother and son pair. Tom and I ask each group to come up with a name for their room, usually based on their subject matter. This week we are visiting the Crazy Fur Sure’s; last week it was the Winging It group; next week we’ll finish up with the Colorful Canines. (I always enjoy hearing what names they give themselves!)
Crazy Fur Sure
This group’s name was of course a self-deprecating jab, but also described their subjects, which were all different but all did have fur. By the end of a week of visits with this group of fun ladies, Tom and I just shortened their name to “the Crazies.” Grace Crocker remarked, “The breakout rooms were special. We were the “Crazies” and formed a real working bond with one another.”
At our Meet and Greet Zoom gathering the evening before class began, I asked everyone in turn if they had a personal goal for the week. I’ll include their answers and other comments in the write-ups below.
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Grace Crocker—California
Grace has been a frequent visitor to our monthly Patreon Show and Share meetings. Her name is always popping up in the Zoom chat window. She is an enthusiastic and positive influence in class, with sage advice to share.
I love it when a quilt has a good story behind it. This quilt of Grace’s family’s long-gone dog Sam, is a wonderful example. The story of Sam goes back to the 1980’s when Grace and her husband purchased an eighty-acre almond orchard in California. Sam soon joined them and quickly adapted to his new eighty-acre home. Grace told us the importance of this photo was that Sam would graze in the bowl of nuts set out on a table—carefully cracking the shells and eating the meats of the almonds only, never the walnuts. He was very discerning.
From Grace:
My goal was to create an image of Sam that each of my children and grandchildren would recognize. It made my granddaughter cry – goal reached!
Grace began working on Sam prior to Day One of class, so that morning we could go right to his nose and check for any needed adjustments, screenshot above. “Start with the Nose,” a good place to begin a portrait, regardless of species—since the rest of a face radiates out from the nose.
From Grace:
Susan’s ability to give instant feedback and direction was unbelievable. She had no time to study our photos but saw every little change we had made and gave direction and annotations, as needed. It was invaluable to have my own work critiqued and to watch as she directed the others in our room.
Grace’s other goal for the week was, “immersion into the process,” which she certainly did, and had herself well prepared for it. Grace has been following my blog, books, Patreon meetings and videos, possibly everything fabric collage I’ve put out there, for years. She created both a spiral and the mandala below (based on a pattern of mine, and also found in my book Serendipity Quilts).
I could see from both the spiral and the mandala that she really understood the use of prints and patterns in her fabrics, and the use of color and value—lights come forward, darks recede. She embraced my “more is better” mantra. Take a look at those frogs and even the dragonfly wings below (click on any photo to see it larger), just try to count the fabric bits in those creatures. More is not only better, it’s fantastic. Now, go back and take another look at Sam—to fully appreciate Grace’s use of, and immersion into, fabric collage.
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Cher Olsson—British Columbia
Cher attended class with her friend Faith McLeod, both from British Columbia, Canada. They live only a 15 minute drive from each other, so in their case, fabrics could be and were, exchanged.
The pup that Cher is collaging is only one of an eventual trio of fur babies—Kona, along with her dog buddy Bronson, and Zoey the cat—all of whom are a friend’s companions. That’s one lucky friend when Cheryl is done with these portraits!
Soulful-eyed Kona took a couple different turns as the days went by as far as her coloring goes. In the photo Cher is working from, one side of Kona’s face has nice highlights, the other is cast in a bit of shadow. Cher’s goal of the week was to work on “blending,” so making the transition from the light to dark values in Kona’s face was her challenge—and she did a great job. Take special note of how well Cher gave the illusion of an eye in shadow with her choice of fabrics.
Question was, what colors? If you look at the screenshot below, you’ll notice that at one point Kona had light violet/grays on the light side of her muzzle. As Cher progressed through the shadowed side, blending from one value to the next, her fabric choices became clearer to her and as she circled back to where she began, the violets were replaced (see photo above).
And that’s a great example of this process—where you start is not necessarily where you end. There are drafts and edits, fabric is found and discarded. And that’s good because as you look closer at and learn more about your subject, adjustments will more than likely need to be made. So far, Kona has gained and kept her purple chin, it’ll be interesting to see if it survives to the next draft!
From Cher:
I sure enjoyed my online class with Susan. I had worked through her book and master class on my own and was excited to have her expertise and eye for detail on my next quilt. I wasn’t disappointed, the technology was top notch. Drawing on your photos and having added videos were invaluable. I look forward to finishing my quilt and I know a coaching session with Susan and Patreon are there when I need them. Thanks Susan and Tom for a great week.
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Faith McLeod—British Columbia
I first met Faith at the Quilt Gallery in Kalispell, MT, where she began the quilt of Bessie and Annie (see “Best Friends” below), which later appeared in this Finish Line post. For this live online class, Faith chose another challenging subject, a mother and child chimpanzee based on a photo by Tim Flach (used with permission).
Faith’s goal for this collage was to stretch her fabric palette to more vibrant colors—even though she had already created a lovely blue cow in the Montana class! But the blue and orange-ish fabrics she chose for these chimpanzees are deeper and richer in color and translate very well from the blacks and warm flesh-tones of the photo.
Faith knew from experience that for this (only five day) class she would need to choose which area to begin with for this double portrait. She choose mama’s face—wanting to challenge herself to give the illusion of it’s many wrinkles. mama’s nose to be exact—and worked up and out from there. In the process, she experimented with the color range and used the prints of her fabrics for the contours and details of the face.
Faith saw this mama as “Madonna”—and over the week she thought about a title for the piece. On Day four “Mea Domina” was written above mama’s head, “my Lady” in Latin. She came together beautifully, and before the week ended, Faith moved successfully on to mea domina’s hand, seeming to have no trouble depicting how her hand is curled around baby’s (yet to be collaged) foot.
From Faith:
We are officially living in a new era where traveling to do a five day workshop is risky and could have a high potential of being cancelled at the last minute. For this reason I chose to participate in Susan’s online class. What fun we had! Pre-coaching session, access to ALL my fabric at home, social time with my classmates, and stellar screen time with Susan. She was able to “draw” right on my collage to show me how to improve my piece and I was able to save a screenshot to refer to later. Tom provided stellar tech support and kept us all on track. I give this experience five stars!
One of the class days I entered the Crazies’ breakout room and Faith had sent in photos (above) of the fabric collage explosion in her studio. Very fun to share the views and we especially liked her fabric palette draped over the sewing machine. A lovely disarray of creativity—I can identify with that.
Jane Goodall
In the work-in-progress portrait below, Faith played with a few different collage and piecing techniques to create the image of famed primatologist, Jane Goodall.
“Best Friends” Bessie and Annie
Be sure to check out this Finish Line post for the heart warming story of these two friends.
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Judy Breneman—Arizona
Judy is also a Patreon supporter, a 2020 Live Online Class participant, and checks in for coaching sessions every so often. Judy’s subjects tend to be those that live around her home in the desert of Arizona—the creatures she sees in her yard and on the trail-cam her husband set up.
One such creature is this bushy-tailed coyote that was well in progress before class started. Judy’s goal was to “fix-it-up”—to finish the second draft—adjusting and adding to what was “put down” in the first draft. Judy is well versed with my way of working in drafts. In pre-class coaching (photo below), Judy and I came up with a short list of what would be nice to have done before class began about a week later. And she got them checked off.
In class, Judy added fabrics to better blend one area to the next, to add contrast in shadowed areas, and to add textural detail here and there. Almost there Judy! Certainly ready for a background, as soon as you are. 😉
From Judy:
The break out rooms felt so real it seemed like we were together in a room. We enjoyed chatting at times and worked silently much of the time, but even then it felt like we were working together. The main drawback, we couldn’t share our fabric.
This was such an amazing experience. I really enjoyed seeing all of these creations and meeting new friends from far away!
I can’t say enough about how wonderful the on line class was. The experience was every bit as good as taking a class in person. Well done, Susan and Tom.
I am just starting my third dog, so this was timely to see. Lots of tips in this post. So helpful to see other’s work and to see the progression to finished product. Thanks Susan for your on-going teaching.
The online class was perfect. Susan and Tom have worked together to make it a fun, meaningful, worthwhile experience. I treasure my memories of the entire time!
Amazing workmanship and talent. I would love to make my teacup yorkie.
I am so glad I signed up for the online class. It was such a great way to be able to take a class from Susan and still get the sense of being in a classroom with everyone else. Thanks to you both, Susan and Tom, for all your work to make this possible.