Last week we focused our Finish Line on the beasts of fabric collage. This week we do a one-eighty and feature some outright cuddly creatures: a cat, cow, and koala. (And, yes, the alliteration was intentional!)
Karen Milne’s cat looks like she’s ready to curl right up and get back to dreaming about dragonflies. Is a cow a cuddly creature? They can be, and Bonnie Anderson’s two-tone bovine certainly is—you’ll want to give that fuzzy forehead a good scratch. And you’d want Cheri Artz’s koala (detail above), to climb down from its perch to give you a hug. Just remember not to pat its head, they don’t like that apparently.
A big thank you to these artists for sharing their immensely engaging and quite colorful collaged artwork—unique interpretations and stories of some of our favorite cuddly creatures.
Do you have a finished fabric collage quilt (and story?) you’d like to share in a future Finish Line post? Click on submission button below.
Submit Quilt for "Finish Line"
Click on any of the smaller photos below to view them larger and to scroll through that photo gallery.
Further Susan Carlson Learning Resources include: Fly on the Wall: Susan Carlson Fabric Collage Studio Watch, Facial Features eWorkshop, website, Serendipity Quilts, patterns, blog (in general), blog “Teaching” category, YouTube videos, Spiral eWorkshop, Sea Turtle eWorkshop, Fabric Collage Online Master Class, and Patreon.
Karen Milne
From Karen Milne of St Augustin, France:
This quilt is a collage of our cat Munch. She was sitting on my husband’s lap and I snapped a photo. Her distant focus and dream-like expression in the photo compelled me to try her as a challenge. I chose a very narrow palette of mostly blues. She was a difficult challenge in value. I chose the theme dragonflies because my cousin in the US sent me a care package including fat quarters of dragonflies. I used wunder under Pellon 805 since I used synthetic fabric in the wings and moon. I try to use glue like Susan. It seems to get everywhere on me and my work space so, I use paper backed iron on adhesive designing in mirror image. She was quilted on a tiny domestic sewing machine; a Brother 240SE with a tiny throat and arm. She has become one of my most popular quilts.
Bonnie L. Anderson
See more of Bonnie’s fantastic collage artwork in On the Road: Teaching Fabric Collage at Woodland Ridge in Downsville, WI, Part 2—May 2024.
From Bonnie L. Anderson of Wahpeton, North Dakota:
After taking the Fabric Collage Master class I wanted to try Susan’s method out in a small scale for a local quilt guild 2 color challenge. (Can you guess my 2 colors?) I was limited to the 2 colors and I also only used fabrics in my stash. I asked my sister-in-law for some of her cow photos to use for my model.
Cheri Artz
See more of Cheri’s beautiful collage artwork here, here, and here.
From Cheri Artz of Taylors, SC:
In 2018 I fulfilled a lifelong bucket list item to go to Australia. I thought it would be fun to do a koala for my first collaged animal. This collage is based on a royalty free photo taken by Andras Deak. The name Hartley Hanson is in remembrance of getting to hold a koala at Hartley’s Crocodile Adventure and walking among the eucalyptus trees filled with koalas at Hanson’s Bay Wildlife Sanctuary on Kangaroo Island.
The quilting on the background is meant to evoke eucalyptus leaves. I was also able to incorporate some Aboriginal fabric that I picked up while in Australia (the kangaroos on the tree). The neck area was particularly troublesome, and I don’t know how many times I reworked it and then started over. But I persevered and finally got it!
