Piece By Piece

Those who know my art quilts know that I am not normally a ‘pieced fabric’ quilter. I prefer to paint and print whole cloth surface designs. But after discovering the amazing fabric collage art quilts of Susan Carlson, I decided to use her techniques to interpret a photograph I had taken of our dog, Sadie. After drawing/painting outlines on cotton fabric, I set up my work space and began to ‘paint’ with fabric pieces. My reference photo of Sadie can be seen above on the left, with a black and white reference copy for dark and light values on the right.

The selected fabrics are first pinned in place and later ‘lightly’ glued in place with some Tacky glue. Quilting will come later after all the fabrics are placed.

I was able to pull out a wide variety of my hand painted/printed fabrics to combine with purchased commercial fabrics.

Creating a mess just goes with the process. All those little bits of fabric are saved for possible use.

Some layering of fabrics is part of the process….and lots of pins! I am not trying to match colors, as much as make value choices.

This is where I am for now. Currently I am back to working on some whole cloth fabrics during a break in the rainy weather. Soon the days will get dark again and I will be glad to delve back into my meditations on color, texture and value. And also remembering Sadie Girl! Updates to come at a future time.