It finally happened, I became one with the fabric I use in my collage art.
The paparazzi were present when I got to breakfast one of our class mornings—dressed in fabric I had purchased at the retreat last year. Chris Daly, the owner of Woodland Ridge Retreat, had one of the color-soaked panels taped to a wall leading to her in-house fabric shop—perfect for me to pose in front of.
My chameleon interpretation was made possible by Kate Lamontagne, of Kamala Boutique in Maine. Kate fashioned two of the panels into one of her shirt designs as a special request for me. How fun it was to surprise Chris and the class with another way to use the fabric we are so attracted to!
[For those interested, the fabric panel is aptly named “Forest” (I did find it at Woodland Ridge), designed by Sue Penn for her fabric line, “Paper Trees,” printed by Free Spirit Fabrics. Chris Daly’s Dye Candy site does have it in stock. The shirt—and other amazingly fun to wear shirts, tops, and pants you’ll see in my class posts—were designed and sewn by Kate Lamontagne. You can find her garments and other art on her website or at her shop in Edgecomb. Maine.]
The Wonderful Women of My May 2025 Class at Woodland Ridge Retreat!
A Calm Place to Be
As I was sitting down at the computer to write this post, I dropped an email to the class students that you’ll meet via my blog this week and next week, asking for photos and comments that they’d like to share. Then I got back to the post at hand, thinking about this teaching experience from about a month ago. The words “relaxing” and “calm” came to mind.
Then I thought, how am I going to write that in a fresh way, since that’s the direction I tend to go for any post I write about Woodland Ridge—and there’s been quite a few over the years. I started sorting out photos to give me some ideas. To my delight, an email reply soon arrived from a student, Mary McKay. In her comments about the retreat experience—her first time at this venue—she covered all the bases, in a new words.
Thank you Mary, for sending your thoughts—perfect timing to go with the photos I had chosen! Team effort.
Be sure to click on any smaller photos in the photo galleries to enlarge the photo and to easily scroll through the images.
From Mary:
Woodland Ridge is a small, private, incredibly serene tucked away little venue in Downsville, Wisconsin.
Chris, the owner, is on site at least 12 hours a day. She knows everyone and makes sure fabric, students, food, housekeeping are handled in a professional way. Speaking of food, Chris manages to create vegan, vegetarian, gluten free and dairy free meals twice a day-breakfast and lunch. I do not believe Chris knows what a canned vegetable or frozen anything is. Everything for breakfast and lunch is made from scratch.
All twelve of the bedrooms overlook the wetland woods which also means nights are dark and very quiet. Rooms are very spacious with ample storage. The bathrooms are lovely with enormous bathtubs. Everything is very clean and well tended.
There are really only a couple house rules: Don’t track in mud and eat your carried in dinners at the dining room table.
There are four communal areas: the kitchen area for coffee and tea and sometimes snacks, the dining area, and two living room type spaces which are used as studios for students. The studios have great light, and look out onto green spaces.
Everyone gets a very large table and plenty of vertical work space. Having the halls lined with fabric is a bonus. Having 12 people split into two workspaces gives everyone space to roam. I was very comfortable going into the studio by myself at 2am.
Woodland Ridge is a very special place. If you go, I am sure you will agree. —Mary McKay
Student Work Gallery
This week I’ll be introducing you to five of the twelve students in this class of open subject matter for all levels.
Nancy Blake
I first met Nancy Blake in a September 2015, Woodland Ridge Retreat. I’m pretty sure that was my first trip to the retreat center, which makes it ten years since I started teaching here! Nancy decided to bring collage works-in-progress—colorful and magnificent creatures—to continue working on this week.
Nancy’s intricate and detailed butterfly was begun in November 2018, in a Madison, WI Fiber Arts Group workshop. Collaged with a concentration of Australian Aboriginal print fabric, Nancy chose a background with a softer mist-like forest print. The big flower was what needed a few more details of subtle yet interesting visual texture.
On her own, Nancy began her fluffy preening spoonbill portrait, photos below. After a final draft once-over, Nancy had time to compare a couple fabric options for this high-contrast collage.
Brenda Betz-Stoltz
Brenda Betz-Stoltz began her husband’s portrait in a November 2018, Woodland Ridge Retreat. Brenda came to class this year to make progress on a this near-and-dear project. The photo above left, is where I last saw this piece, and pretty much where it still was at the beginning of this week. But look at what Brenda achieved by the end of the week, above right.
Brenda had hit a wall with the eyes. Facial features aren’t easy, and all the more important when it comes to someone you love. Which made it all the more uncomfortable when I told her it would be best to just start over on his eyes—with a big breath and sharp scissors. In-progress photos below.
Terri Drimel
Terri Drimel was so very excited to be in this class and I was very much looking forward to meeting her in-person. She had taken online workshops with me including a 5-day online class last October 2024. Attending the Woodland Ridge Retreat was part of her retirement celebration. She and her husband will be hitting the road in an RV and the Apache Trout collage was specifically designed as artwork to grace their new traveling home.
Terri is quite good at using the patterns and color variations in her fabrics for contours and values in her subjects—a little fancifulness even when she’s creating a “realistic” fish. In-progress photos below.
Mary McKay
Mary McKay’s double portrait of Lucy and Homer, is in the later stages of little tweaks here and there—sometimes taking minutes to remedy or adjust, sometimes hours. Comparison photos can become a bit of an eye-spy exercise in “what’s different?” But the combinations of all the little things do make a big difference in the end. Beginning and end of the week overall photos are above, close-up beginning/end of week photos are below. Hints: look at the color contrasts on Homer’s muzzle, and the differences in Lucy’s eyes and mouth.
Nancy Bonkowski
In last year’s Woodland Ridge class, Nancy Bonkowski worked on three beautiful collages and at the end, got a very nice start on a family dog portrait, photo included below, upper left. In-between classes she made good progress, photo below, upper right—leaving much of that cream-colored fur for class time. Nancy tackled all those subtle values beautifully and now has a “palette” of light to dark(er) cream colored fabrics to work with as she gets to those neck and chest patches.
Show and Share
Even with me forgetting to remind folks to bring along other quilts of theirs to show and share, we still had a nice break one day as folks “modeled” their creations. Hover your courser over a photo to see the artist’s name. Click on any photo to enlarge the image and easily scroll through the entire gallery. Thanks to all for sharing.
There were two visitors who stopped by for the Show and Share—Cathleen McCoy who lives nearby and attended my Woodland Ridge 2017 Retreat, and Joe Clark.
Joe is a raku artist and married to Nancy Blake. Joe was also one of my students at Woodland Ridge Retreat—November 2021. It was so nice to see them again—Cathleen and her big ol’ pup, Joe and his big beautiful crow quilt.
Morning Walks With Frank
Every so often my student Mary McKay, travels to a location that interests her partner, Frank. Frank is not only a birder, but a bird guide, and a teller of dad-jokes to entertain in the lulls of birdsong. Apparently, this area of Wisconsin is a good bird area, so I got to see Frank at a class again.
Those of you who follow my posts may recognize Frank through the fabulous fabric portrait of him that Mary collaged. Frank is a personable and colorful character in both real life and in art. Those of us who like to get up early for morning walks found Frank good company and a very patient person as I kept asking, “what bird is that?”
A short walk down the hill gets you to a larger pond where this year, sandhill cranes and trumpeter swans were nesting, and once-in-awhile, calling.
See you next week with the other half of the class and lots more fabric collage art in: Relaxing Into Fabric Collage in WI—at Woodland Ridge Retreat, Part 2.
Shout out to Kate at Kamala Boutique. The MOST beautiful clothes. You wear it well!
Wonderful pictures – thank you for the inspiration!!!
What a delightful post! I almost feel like I was there. Beautiful work by all.
Thanks, Susan for the wonderful recap of a very special retreat! It was good to meet you and get your expert advice each day as I progressed through the stages of my collage. I have set it aside for now to continue with other projects that have been waiting to get done. The retreat was a fantastic experience I will fondly remember. Everything was perfect!