Fabric Collage and the Messy-Scary Stage
When working on a fabric collage, you will almost certainly, sooner or later, enter the Messy-Scary Stage, or the M-SS. You won’t be able to say I didn’t warn you. … Read More
How To
Lightbulb Moments: Fabric Collage Epiphanies at AQC
There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing the lightbulb go on. As a teacher of fabric collage, when a student gets it, I experience a rush, a flood of endorphins. And … Read More
Work On It: Pinning Boards for Fabric Collage
Fabric collage is 10 percent making a design, quilting and finishing. Between the making-a-design and quilting, 90 percent of your time is spent cutting and gluing. During this time you’re … Read More
Happy Anniversary: Favorite Posts of Year Three
I know New Year’s Day is still a few weeks off, but for this blog, the old year just ended and a new one has begun. Our third anniversary passed … Read More
Choosing Your Subject for Fabric Collage
What makes a good subject for fabric collage? Since virtually any image can be recreated using this process, that’s not really a helpful question to ask. Instead, speaking as a … Read More
Filling in the Corners: Revisiting Backgrounds
Backgrounds pose more of a challenge than you might think they should. I’ve seen that happen again and again with my students—and it’s the same for me—though saying that doesn’t … Read More
Susan Carlson Fabric Collage Toolkit
While I was traveling to far off lands to teach recently (more on that next week and the week after), Tom followed through with an idea we had been … Read More
Get in Line: Skinny Lines in Fabric Collage
At some point in every fabric collage quilt, typically as you’re adding those final details, you’ll need to add a little thin line to your piece. Whether it is in order to outline a feature or as part of the feature itself, such as laugh lines around an mouth, these little details add a lot but are sometimes frustrating to manage. How do you cut a line so thin that you can barely pick it up and glue it down?
Eye Spy: Using Novelty Prints in Fabric Collage
What types of fabrics do you use for fabric collage? I am often asked that question. It would probably be easier to answer the opposite of that question: What types of fabrics don’t I use for fabric collage? I use them all, if appropriate. But what about novelty fabrics? Do I use them? Oh, yes. All the time.
Online Master Class Now Available: Some Reflections
In 2016, when I first decided to create an online class to teach fabric collage, I had no idea. No idea how much work it would be. No idea how … Read More