Revisiting a Fabric Collage Finish Line: Celestial Edition

Tom and I wish all of you a wonderful holiday season. From the week preceding Christmas through the week after New Year’s Day, it’s a busy time of year for our family. Starting with the Winter Solstice, December 21 (also my birthday), and continuing for two weeks until my sister’s birthday on January 4th, there’s plenty of reasons to gather with family and friends.

With this in mind, for the next couple weeks, we’ll be giving ourselves a little bit of a break by revisiting old posts until after New Year’s, when we’ll start up again with new blog post content.

For today’s post, as a nod to the Solstice with its longest nights of the year—or longest days if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, please enjoy the following celestial-themed Finish Line quilts. Thank you to all who shared their radiant, shining, and inspirational fabric collage creations and stories!

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As a heads up, on Saturday, January 7, we’ll be opening up registration for two new Live Online Classes.

Portraits Only
March 27-31, 2023
$1490
Class size: 8 max—intermediate level

This class is for those who have had prior experience with Susan’s fabric collage technique (please contact Tom—[email protected]—for details of qualifications), and are ready to advance into fabric collage portraiture. The smaller class size will allow Susan to provide extra focus on and extra assistance for this often challenging subject matter. For more information see the description of my Live Online Fabric Collage Classes.

Email Tom ([email protected]) to be placed on an “expression of interest” email list for notification when registration opens for this class.

Animals Only
May 29-June 2, 2023
$995
Class size: 12 max—all levels

This class deals with animal subjects—furred, feathered, or scaled—pets, exotic animals, birds, sea life, sea slugs, whatever type of animal appeals to you. For more information see the description of my Live Online Fabric Collage Classes.

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Original Post from December 21, 2019

Today, December 21, is the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere—the shortest day of the year or, as I prefer to say, the longest night. From now on the days will only get longer, which here in Maine is a big deal, as it starts getting dark around 3:30 pm these days. We’re still in for the worst weather that winter will throw at us, but with a little more daylight every day, it’ll remind us that, eventually, spring will come.

Today also happens to be my birthday, which gives me a special connection to this celestial occurrence. When I was a kid, I sometimes felt like my birthday was getting abbreviated because it was the shortest day of the year. But then with all those glittery lights of the holiday season—almost as if they were put up just for me—I started looking at it in a different way. The longest night of the year gave me more time to enjoy the sparkle.

This year, with the solstice falling on a Saturday, it seemed like the perfect time to highlight sun and moon fabric collage quilts in my weekly post. Whether made from my patterns or not, sun and moon faces are popular choices in my classes—such as the sun/moon combo in the quilt above made by Nadia Klukovich. You’ll see more of Nadia’s “Stella Luna,” at the end of this post.

Suns and moons are also good first or second projects for those using the Fabric Collage Master Class Manual, and have their own chapters as projects in my book, Serendipity Quilts.

So enjoy these sun and moon submissions. Maybe they’ll inspire you to make your first or next fabric collage quilt. Regardless of your latitude, this celestial project may give you the excuse you need to stay indoors—out of the winter cold, or the summer heat in the southern hemisphere. Thank you to all who submitted these quilts!

And when you’re ready, I’d love to see the results. Submit your fabric collage quilt—sun, moon, or whatever your subject—for a future Finish Line post right here.

Submit Quilt for "Finish Line"

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Natalie Barnes

The warm autumn colors of Natalie Barnes’ “Sol Queen,” seem to radiate from the cool background—like sunshine on snow. Check out the puffy trapunto cheeks and lips, easy to see in the photo below, as though she’s going to blow out a huge hot breath. I really like the variety of fabrics that Natalie used to create the depth in the eyes, and the fancifulness of the Queen’s crown.

From Natalie:

I’ve spent 2019 investigating different non-sewn appliqué techniques. I’ve enjoyed the process Susan shares the best. I took my time with this piece. It was important to understand color value, shading and movement. I’m largely self-taught, feeling more confident to “paint” with fabric than with any other medium. If I have a signature, it is using metallic fabrics and/or thread in my work. When the sun hits this piece just right, the iridescent ribbon I used to give Sol Queen movement lights up. Trapunto added dimension to her lips and cheeks. I watched Susan’s video on different ways to mount our finished work. I am very happy with and proud of this piece and grateful to Susan from afar for her teaching.

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Pat Beaudoin

Pat Beaudoin of Dundas, Ontario, came to my retreat here in Harpswell, Maine in October this year, where she did exceptional work on a lioness quilt, click on link above to check it out. To prepare for class, Pat purchased and used the Fabric Collage Master Class Manual, completing a spiral exercise and the quilt above, based on my sun pattern.

Doing this preliminary work really gave Pat a big leg up in class—I could see right away that she had an understanding of how to apply the printed designs she saw in her fabrics to the visual texture needed in her subject. I’ve been following her progress in the private Master Class Facebook group as her lioness quilt nears completion. Hopefully, we’ll eventually see that quilt in an upcoming Finish Line post.

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Paula Bissell

Paula Bissell of Rhode Island based her sun quilt on my pattern, which is also available in my book Serendipity Quilts. She also cites this blog as a source of instruction. This sun portrait makes me smile with the lush colors and the fancifulness of the prints that Paula has used. I love that just like I did, she saved her bitty fabric scraps for years before knowing exactly what she was going to do with them.

From Paula:

I have saved every tiny little fabric scrap during my last 8 years of sewing with no idea what I’d do with them until I stumbled on fabric collage. Wow! I’m so happy I saved them. I work upstairs in our house and when I started doing fish from the book my husband would say, “what are you doing up there? I don’t hear the sewing machine.” I described it to him as putting together a jigsaw puzzle but you get to make your own pieces and decide where they goes. After making a couple of fish and a mountain dulcimer I tackled the sun which is my favorite so far. I Love doing collage based on Susan’s technique.

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Deborah Black

Deborah Black is from here in Maine. She used my book Serendipity Quilts to make these dramatic sun and moon quilts for her grandsons. These were her first fabric collage quilts, and what a lovely and fanciful touch she has with the facial features and other details. These quilts have a feeling of movement to me—maybe it’s all the repeating circle imagery, like planets and other celestial bodies are orbiting around the sun and moon.

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Sally Carruth

I first met Sally Carruth at “Quilting in the Desert” in Phoenix, Arizona, January of 2016. In fact, the blog post for that class was my very first “On the Road Teaching” post. My posts have certainly evolved (for better or worse) to include way more info about the locations I visit,  and way more in-progress photos from students’ projects. But I do have the two photos below of Sally’s first fabric collage, the sun face based on my pattern.

I’ve since had the pleasure of having Sally in two more of my classes, both with MISA (Madeline Island School of the Arts) at their Tanque Verde Ranch winter location in Tucson, Arizona. In her second class with me, Sally began “Sadie, American Mule,” and included in this Quilted Menagerie Finish Line post.

In the second MISA:Tucson class, Sally began a sea turtle based on another pattern of mine. It was there that I got to see both Sadie the Mule and this sun face quilt in real-life.

It was especially nice to see how Sally finished this sun quilt. She added a layer of tulle over the top prior to quilting, one of the quilting techniques I talk about in class—and her tulle was printed with a camouflage design, giving a faint light/dark variation to the collage underneath. If you look closely in the detail below, you can see the camo design showing up best over the blue background.

Printed tulle such as this is harder to find, but when you do, it can make for an interesting touch to an image and especially to jazz up otherwise solid looking areas or fabrics.

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Mary Klarfeld

I love the energy and spontaneity in Mary Klarfeld’s sun face. The circular arrangement of scraps in the background give a whirling, orbiting, and mesmerizing motion. Mary tells me that this face is based on the pattern in my book. However the artistic liberties she took with the design virtually obscure the original drawing with her unique vision.  Her title, “Indian Summer,” and the circular design and threads running from one side to the other, reminds me of a Native American dream catcher. I encourage people to “cut loose” with fabric collage, and Mary certainly did.

From Mary:

I used Susan’s Serendipity Quilts book for the template. Then, I sat and watched portions of the Collage Master Class. I used scraps from my quilting and sewing and improvised. I even used my husband’s old shirts for the sky.

 

I anticipated a happy, smiling sun, however, that’s not quite what I ended up with. As I gathered the different fabrics of color and intensities, this moody guy came forth. If you put your hand covering one side of his face, he is smiling. On the other side, he is angry. I wanted to give the sun a “spinning” effect so I had bits of fire shoot off from the sun. Then had the blue sky background circle around the sun in streaks. I quilted the collage with gold & orange colored thread, outlining bits of the face: the eyes, nose, lips, etc. Then stitched gold thread from the bits of fire to the end of the canvas for effect.

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Jackie Hillman

Jackie Hillman created the piece above by combining my two patterns into one quilt—joined with, as Jackie says, “a twist.” Congratulations to Jackie for being chosen as a finalist the International Quilt Festival in Houston in 2017 (photo below).

From Jackie:

I met you at festival in Houston this last year [2016] and showed you photos of my sun/moon quilt in progress. Several of my friends took your class in Kerrville, TX. I was so enthralled that I purchased your book and dove in.

 

As you can see by the photos the piece incorporates adaptations of your pattern along with my own twist. The two pieces are put together with yoyos and are embellished with beads and crystals.

 

Thanks for the inspiration!

When someone creates these collages on their own, I don’t get to see the creative process at work, so I really appreciate that Jackie sent along these in-progress photos. I like the way she treated the rays of the sun like solar flares. And you can easily see in the detail photo below all the great prints Jackie used to give added interest to the face, and sparkles in the eyes.

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Lynn Simon

Lynn Simon of Sidney, British Columbia, Canada, used the sun pattern from Serendipity Quilts. Lynn’s choice of fabrics demonstrate why printed batiks—with their color and value variations, often within one piece of fabric—work so well with this collage technique. Right off you can see how she’s selected specific areas of color and print for a very nice value gradation in the rays.

Looking closer, Lynn has achieved a soft gradation of light to dark values across the face with a wide variety of batik prints that relate to each other—in either color, value, or both—and therefore visually blend together. Lynn plans to tackle my “Betta Duo” design next, and I look forward to seeing her progress in fabric collage.

From Lynn:

I found the whole process of making this quilt so meditative and relaxing. Time just flew playing with the fabrics and their placement. I’m planning on making the Yin-Yang quilt in the new year.

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Nadia Klukovich

Nadia Klukovich of Reno, Nevada, started her “Stella Luna” in my 2016 Art Quilt Tahoe class. Nadia very cleverly combined both sun and moon into a single design. She returned the next year to continue working on this large double-portait. You can see that progress here.

Nadia is such a very nice person and a pleasure to have in class, twice—photos from 2016 are above, photos from 2017 are below.

In that second class, Nadia arrived with plans to add details to the celestial image as a whole, to get it onto a background, and to have it prepped for quilting. She achieved all of that. Above, are beginning and end of week details showing a few of the many fun and flowery bits of fabric placed on the rays and faces (click on any photos to see them larger). Nadia also added other details with small pieces of glittered tulle and sheers in select areas of the image—emphasizing highlights, shadows, and accentuating the features.

Below is Nadia with her chosen background—a single piece of fabric with a radiating design printed at the perfect scale for this sun/moon combo. Sparkle was added to the background with another single piece of fabric, a sheer embedded with glittered circles in graduated density. When turned on the side, it placed a heavily star-studded sky behind the moon, with only a few stars extending into the day-time sky. A very nice effect.

From Nadia:

I took Susan’s class at Art Quilt Tahoe in Nov 2016. Since I am a realist, this was a stretch for me, and I didn’t want to make a colorful animal project, though I love color. In my search for a subject, I came across a painting similar to my piece that inspired me. The first class that I took I struggled with the collage concept, so I repeated the class to finish my project 2 years later at the same venue, and everything just clicked! Susan is an amazing teacher and inspiration who drew me out of myself and showed me, very patiently, to open myself up to being carefree with fabric, and let the colors and patterns work for you. It was truly an amazing process and journey to grow as an artist!

I saw Nadia again this year when I was teaching at Art Quilt Tahoe for the third time. I admit I was disappointed that she wasn’t taking my class again—I guess I have to learn how to share my students with other teachers. And now “Stella Luna” is finished. The quilting follows the rays on the background fabric, and the two merged faces are full of color, pattern, and just enough glitter. All-in-all, a perfect ending to Nadia’s celestial story.

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Wishing everyone a lovely Solstice—and a rich and colorful and sparkling season of light.