It’s the Dog Days of Summer, and a very relaxed Chicory (by Cynthia LeRouge, in-progress above), demonstrates that lounging and dreaming of mischief is the best way to pass these days.
A great way to spend a week of summer was July’s Live Online Class with the lovely and talented women pictured below. Every day they helped each other and brought out smiles for all of us.
Doing his part to keep this online class running smoothly from his office computer, is my husband Tom, pictured below, having a very nutritious snack break with our little Kali.
Getting Started on a Fabric Collage: Photo, Drawing, Fabric
These days with the ability to teach online, I provide pre-class coaching a couple weeks prior to the class, whether I’m teaching in-person or online. This coaching consists of Zoom meetings where I help prepare students for the first day of class—be it questions about source image, pattern, fabrics, or all of that.
In pre-class coaching, we discuss whether the image makes a good subject, whether and how it should be cropped, and so forth. We also discuss how big to make the final image (bigger is better!), even calculating the enlargement percentage in order to have a pattern enlarged.
Before class I also like to touch base on fabrics—choosing the colors and designs that will work best for the “story” of the chosen subject.
As a special treat for my online students, once I get an idea of where each person is headed with their project, I pick a few fabrics from my “class-stash” cubbies (lower corner of left photo, above) and send them off as welcome packages.
This week I bring you the in-progress fabric collage classwork of this online summertime class of six very cool women and their bright and shiny collection of portraits. “Show and Share” photos from our mid-week after-class evening together are included in each student’s section as well.
Enjoy!
As you view this post, click on any smaller image to see it larger and to scroll through each gallery grouping.
Karen Leder
Karen joined us from Sacramento, California. While not new to fabric collage, she was new to portraiture. Her goal for this project was to create a collaged portrait of her grandson, on a large piece of driftwood he was climbing.
From Karen:
This is my three-year-old grandson, Graham, climbing some driftwood on the beach at Manchester, California during our stay this past June, where he was so proud of himself for climbing so high. We had a beach cove all to ourselves, with the wind blowing his hair. When he saw the photo, he said, “Crazy hair, I don’t care.” It’s a nice reminder of a magical beach trip.
I worked on the quilt two more weeks non-stop, and finally had to stop because the fabric was getting stretched and ruined from all the gluing and ungluing. Susan said we could stop after we learned what we set out to learn from that project, and I took her at her word, as I learned so much from the project.
While there are lots of things I would still like to change, I can say it does look like him, largely as a result of Susan having me draw, re-draw, and re-draw his features. Here is a picture of where it stands today.
I am excited to start a new project and get some coaching from Susan. So far, I signed up for Patreon and the monthly Tuesday meetings.
Here is a sun quilt I started the weekend before starting Susan’s class. I finished it last week. I plan to quilt both of these in the next week or two. Such a great quilt class experience. Susan and Tom are a great team!
Karen Leder Show and Share
Cynthia LeRouge
Cynthia joined us from Port Townsend, Washington. She’s explored many art mediums (see her gallery below!) and her goal for the week was to interpret her beloved pup Chicory, in a collage using fun and meaningful fabric prints,
From Cynthia:
Chicory, my Papillon, has a way of turning even a quiet moment into an adventure. This piece is inspired by a photograph of her peeking out from beneath a blanket while hiding on our bed—a perfect reflection of her playful curiosity and her talent for finding herself in little “pickles.” I chose soft pinks flowing into cool teals and blues to express both her sweetness and her bright, mischievous intelligence.
I tried to just go with 12 fabrics, but wound up adding some transitions and “easter egg” options to my palette. Yes – an addiction to color & also our little fabric store in town had a 40% off sale on flowered fabrics. That all said, I think that flowers, feathers, and butterflies will really capture Chicory’s personality.
Sue Carlson’s Master Class opened up exciting new possibilities with fabric collage, and it has been a joy to bring Chicory’s personality to life through layers of fabric, color, and stitch. Loved the class and look forward to many more interactions with Sue.
Cynthia LaRouge Show and Share
Ros Pettit
Ros joined us from Ellicott City, Maryland, and has been in a few classes of mine. This week she felt it was time to get more experience with portraits, namely portrait “exercises” to gain skills for larger projects.
Ros began her portrait practice with a ready-made fabric palette of scraps from previous projects neatly stored in glass canning jars.
With serendipitous inspiration from the scraps, an image began emerging from the simple portrait design on her foundation fabric. The portrait evolved and morphed into a sort of turquoise spirit portrait—like an exotic amulet.
Ros Pettit Show and Share
Karin Tracy
Karin (a.k.a. Kit) joined us from Aubrey, Texas. After 20 years of quilting experience, Kit has turned exclusively to art quilts and loves creating faces. Adding art classes to her experience has helped her portraiture skills–already impressive when I met her years ago.
From Karin:
I like doing portraits so I decided to bring life to a very old photo of my great-grandmother on her wedding day in 1889.
I chose to use calicos rather than batiks on the face as it gave it a more vintage look. Originally, I was going to do the picture of the wedding couple, but decided to focus just on my great grandmother – as it was quite an intense amount of work, and it will go better on my wall where I have a current quilt of her daughter, her granddaughter, and myself – 4 generations of the maternal line in fabric!
I will say I enjoyed the class very much. I questioned how well on-line classes can work for quilt art. It was nice to be in my own house, spend time with my dogs during the day, and to have access to fabric I didn’t even know I needed. Susan did an amazing job of going from person to person and meeting needs.
There was time to even develop a relationship with the others in the class. We found a commonality in our interests and background experiences. And we got to meet the infamous and prolific Grace, that we all inspire to be more like her.
Karin Tracy Show and Share
Grace Crocker
Grace joined us from Chico, California. Over the last four years that I’ve been working with Grace, she’s created numerous collaged family portraits—often setting herself the challenge of working from old black-and-white photos. Regardless, all end up impressive and heart-warming—33 collage quilts (and counting)—mostly portraits. She celebrated her 90th birthday this year. We call her Amazing Grace.
From Grace:
I spent four days in this class working on this 65 year old picture of my daughters, Lisa and Bonnie, sitting on the front porch, licking the cake icing from their fingers and the bowl. It was a poor quality photo, but thankfully, Tom was able to enhance it using ChatGPT [as recommended in this class by Karin Tracy].
I struggled with squinty eyes, and the dresses did not allow me to collage in my usual manner. Thankfully, after-class coaching sessions with Susan ( highly recommended) brought me to this point [below]. Ready to give those girls shoes and socks and play with the background.
Grace Crocker Show and Share
Jesse Trerice
Jesse joined us internationally from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. Her goal for the week was to get a good start on a favorite and unforgettable dog (with a great name), Oetzi.
From Jesse:
Oetzi wasn’t my dog, but I loved him like he was. He was my favourite hiking and all around adventure partner, which says a lot about the trust we shared since our hikes and adventures were in grizzly country in the Yukon Territory, Canada (beside Alaska, US). He felt like an extension to myself. I was so fortunate that his owners fully supported our special bond and enjoyed hearing about their dog’s other life.
I chose this image because of the focus in his eyes and it shows off his white mohawk and his “facial furnishings”. His pedigree might have stated wire-haired German pointer, but to me he looked like he came straight out of Jim Henson’s workshop! The detail of his fur was initially my nemesis in the image tracing stage. It took quite a few tracings before I was able to produce an image that wasn’t too detailed for enlarging and transferring to my foundation fabric.
Selecting fabric was a delight and it was surprisingly liberating to cut into my fabrics while setting up my palette.
Unfortunately, due to personal reasons, I wasn’t able to complete the workshop or finish my collage. However, I am looking forward to picking this up and joining the patron group just as soon as a few life things are better aligned. Especially after receiving additional fabrics in the mail from Susan!
In the meantime, Oetzi’s on a short pause (paws? hee hee)—his unfinished collage and palette is patiently waiting at the creative trailhead in the corner of my living room.
