We continue this week with more fantastic Fabric Collage Finish Line quilts. As we close in on our 100th edition of the Finish Line, remember to submit your finished fabric collage quilt to be featured in future 2024 Fabric Collage Finish Line posts. Hundreds of thank you’s to all who have submitted their art and stories to share with us throughout the years—they’ve been awesome and inspiring.
Submit Quilt for "Finish Line"
Jenny Bowker
Jenny Bowker from Canberra, Australia, is one of the reasons it’s a good thing to travel and teach in the quilt world. Like myself, she’s a quilt instructor and our paths have crossed a few lovely times. If it wasn’t for the fabric art and teaching that we both do, I wouldn’t have had the chance to meet her years ago. I highly recommend checking out her amazing quilts and reading their stories, which are entwined with her own very interesting life stories.
Knowing Jenny’s talents in fabric portraiture, I was honored to have her in my class as she took some time out to create Buckley’s sunny portrait. Piece-by-piece he progressed with all those great patterned fabrics to portray his fluffy texture and well-rounded contours. How fun it is to see Buckley again, finished, and placed in a beautifully big, lush, and “scrappy” garden. Cheers, Jenny!
(Click on any photos in post to see them larger.)
From Jenny:
Buckley was almost completely made in a class with Susan at the AQC in Melbourne in 2019. We really love our smooth ChowChow and I knew I had to finish it before he died—and he is getting older. I wanted our garden to be his background but I wanted it to feel like a rich and scrappy quilt. It’s a combination of Susan’s wonderful collage techniques and piecing, with lots of free motion quilting.
Heidi Borchmann
Heidi Borchmann from Denmark (Hørning in Jutland), has created an adorable puffin (we have them here in Maine as well), by learning the collage technique through my blog posts and book, Serendipity Quilts. Like a character from a story, it’s like I can hear this little guy whistling a tune, while strutting across the rocks. Thanks for the smile, Heidi, and I look forward to seeing where this new fabric collage “fire” will take you on your next project :-).
From Heidi:
The idea for this quilt was a picture in a power point presentation at work. I fell for it because my sister is very fascinated by these birds (I am too) after she saw them at The Faroe Islands (Færøerne in Danish). And I thought it would be a fun project for us to do together. So we started up together when she was visiting me, but we did not have time to finish it (sadly we have way too little time together for projects), so I finished it alone.
There is at lot of “development potential”. I need to stop trying to make the picture perfect in the first draft and to give myself more time to make the second and third draft (lol). But it was a fun project to work on and I am “on fire” to try another project 🙂
Thank you so very, very much for your sharing on your blog, for your emails (which always, always make my day!) and your classes and book. You have successfully opened up a new world to me!
The next two collage artists, and indeed their subjects as well, are related to each other. Frankie Martinez and Jackie Dalley are sisters, and their subjects, Peekay and Bodie are their granddogs—would that make the pups cousins, of sorts? I first met all of them in my November 2022 Live Online Fabric Collage Class, in the self-titled breakout room, the Doggone-Its. Frankie and Jackie got to visit and work together from one coast to the other, and I got to see their grand-fur-babies come to life. See more of Frankie and Jackie’s projects in this post: Special Fabric Collage Finish Line: Live Online Class November 2022.
Frankie Martinez
Frankie Martinez of Santa Barbara, California, gave herself the challenge to create Peekay with different colored fabrics—sandy colors to represent his warm highlights and soft aquas for his shadowed side. I’m so glad she pushed through after class and finished him. I could tell that Frankie was on the right track by the end of the class week, though Peekay was still a little in the messy-scary stage. I loved reading (below) about Peekay’s progress after class—adding new fabrics, now that Frankie had a better idea of what she needed, then working one area to the next, gaining more collage experience with each draft (or edit)—perfect. Congrats, Frankie, you captured Peekay in looks and spirit.
From Frankie:
After discovering Susan Carlson, I started fabric collage with the spiral, sun and moon projects from Serendipity Quilts. I was hooked! I took the November 2022 online workshop, working on a portrait of Peekay, my son’s adorable little rescue dog.
Peekay is my son’s sweet little dog and my favorite granddog ☺. I found this project more challenging than I expected and decided to put it aside for a couple months while I worked on a couple more straightforward projects. Meanwhile I collected a few more fabrics that were more appropriate for blending and specifically for this project.
By the time I got back to work on Peekay, I had more confidence about the process and my ability. I ended up working on his body first to get in the groove, then ended up re-working his face to improve the blending and shadows. I’m really happy with the outcome and I feel like I captured Peekay’s sweet, loyal demeanor.
Jackie Dalley
Jackie Dalley of Westford, Massachusetts, came to fabric collage from the perspective of a costume designer, and she has quite the eye for color and detail. All that experience with fabric seemingly exploded into the work she has created with fabric collage since the summer of 2022. It didn’t take her long to work from the Spiral eWorkshop, to Bodie’s pup-portrait, to people portraits seen in these posts: Susan Carlson Fabric Collage: Sun Portraits—First Drafts, My First Portraits Only Online Fabric Collage Class—Part 1, and September Live Online Class Part 2—Loose Ends. Beautiful work, Jackie.
From Jackie:
I have been a big fan of the work of quilt artist, Bisa Butler for a few years, and with my retirement coming up last May [2022], I knew I wanted to give fabric collage a try. It seemed like such a natural extension of my life’s work as a costume designer: my love of fabric, color, drawing and sewing could all come together in a new way.
When my sister was visiting from California last summer, we discovered Susan’s fabric collage work as we were poking around on the internet. We started doing fabric collage with the spiral exercise and both of us got hooked. We followed that with Serendipity Quilts and the Master Class, and finally, we both decided to take Susan’s online class in November from opposite sides of the country.
I started this quilt of Bodie, my daughter’s and son-in-law’s dog, in Susan’s online class in November and finished it in time to gift it to them at Christmas. Bodie is a goofy, energetic, chaotic dog. I wanted to capture some of that personality, starting with the photo I chose when he was mid-adventure. I paired that with a second photo that showed both ears and his white chest patch better. The color palette was inspired by a colorful, splashy piece of fabric that seemed to reflect his energy and playfulness. Having that as a starting point made it really easy to narrow down my fabric choices.
The concentrated class time and Susan’s step-by-step guidance made the process of tackling this project much less daunting. There were several challenges that Susan helped me figure out—areas that were difficult for me to decipher from the photo: his left eye, which looked cross-eyed when I followed the photo in my first attempt; his ears (tricky figuring out what was inner and outer ear, as well as how the ear folded); and when I got to the mouth I really questioned my choice of an open-mouth pose! The lip line and gum line, before even getting to the teeth were really hard to interpret.
With annotations, Susan was able to make all these areas clear to me and broke down the process of collaging each area (top down!) so much more logical. I was happy when I got to the bottom half of Bodie that I was able to loosen up a little and not get so caught up in detail (my initial goal for the class), having completed those facial features! I had a lot of fun creating this collage and I think it captures the spirit of Bodie!
loved the pictures of everyone’s animal. A good way to start the day!
love the fiber art work of these artists !