Welcome to week two of my Material Collage Evaluation. This six-week refresher (or introduction) on the fundamentals of material collage is in preparation for my upcoming stay follow-along Zoom courses starting in February (see beneath for information and registration)—nevertheless, it might additionally function a quiet distraction in a busy time of yr—a strategy to at the very least mentally immerse your self in some artistic fabric-play.
In final week’s Saturday publish, we coated selecting cloth. Right this moment in Create a Palette for Material Collage (following beneath), I present how one can use your chosen materials to make a cloth collage palette, a helpful and releasing step that loosens up your strategy to a collage and facilitates creativity with any topic. Over the subsequent 4 weeks, we’ll proceed to focus on preparatory steps associated to a cloth collage venture. So a method or one other, in the event you subscribe to a four-week Comply with-Alongside or not, you’ll be prepared for a colourful and fabulous starting to the New 12 months.
And for as we speak, December twenty first, could you’ve a beautiful Winter Solstice—or Summer season Solstice in the event you stay within the Southern Hemisphere—having fun with both the magic of the longest evening of the yr, or the vitality of the longest day. All the very best to you on this season of sunshine, heat, and reference to others.
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The Fantastical Fish Comply with Alongside in February, will use a fish sample (of your personal design or one which you will select free from my assortment) with a 2025 concentrate on “mixing”—one among my most requested about expertise—the method of utilizing the colours and prints in materials to merge one into one other, usually to create the phantasm of kind, with highlights and shadows.
The Bugs and Butterflies Comply with Alongside (additionally your personal design or based mostly on my patterns) will concentrate on butterflies and how one can strategy the flowing and colourful shapes of their fascinating wings. Study what to search for in your materials and how one can work with their printed designs to create motion and kind—letting the material do a lot of the be just right for you.
Use the hyperlinks beneath to register for these four-week courses, held every Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. japanese time.
Within the meantime, particularly in case you are new to cloth collage, it could be useful to overview the fundamentals via this present collection of posts overlaying the material collage method earlier than these courses start. In following posts we’ll proceed with the subjects of glueing, working in sequence, backgrounds, and sheers.
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February 6, 13, 20, 27, 2025 — 7 pm, Japanese Time
Fantastical Material Collage Fish Zoom Comply with-Alongside
REGISTER HERE
Value: $78
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July 24, 31, August 7, 14, 2025 — 7 pm, Japanese Time
Fascinating Material Collage Bugs and Butterflies Zoom Comply with-Alongside
REGISTER HERE
Value: $78
When you’ve ever thought-about giving your self the reward of a 5-day week-long cloth collage class expertise with me—and are usually not scared off by staying cozy in your house, not touring anyplace, and maintaining your cloth stash shut by—do we now have a particular provide for you—a $100 low cost (which supplies you the chance so as to add extra cloth to that stash!).
January 20-24, 2025
Susan Carlson 5-Day Dwell On-line Class—All Ranges, Animals Solely
Value WAS: $995
NOW: $895
REGISTER HERE
Benefit from this particular provide solely for January’s “Cozy” Dwell On-line Material Collage Class
Additional Susan Carlson Studying Sources: Susan Carlson Quilts web site, patterns, weblog (typically), YouTube movies, Spiral eWorkshop, Patreon, and our February Fantastical Fish and Summertime’s Fascinating Bugs and Butterfly Work-Alongs
Create a Palette for Material Collage
First printed October 31, 2020
A painter’s most important device, beside her brushes, is her palette. For every portray, an artist chooses from her numerous tubes of paint simply those she desires for this explicit picture. She squeezes out a dab of this and a dab of that till she has your entire vary of colours and values she desires to make use of.
I need you to have a look at your cloth as your palette. Now don’t misunderstand: You could have stacks and stacks of material, however that’s not your palette. Consider these as your tubes of paint. You need to slim these selections down. And most significantly, simply as you may’t use the paint when it’s nonetheless within the tube, you may’t use your cloth when it’s in an enormous chunk of a yard or extra.
What to do?
When creating the turtle quilt from my Material Collage: Sea Turtle eWorkshop, my palette was at all times shut by and was organized by worth, mild to darkish (see photograph at starting of publish). As a result of my palette was close by and arranged, it was simple to zero in on simply the precise selection of material.
Nicely, what I’ve been telling my cloth collage college students an increasing number of, is to make a cloth palette earlier than they start their collage. I’ve them choose a variety of materials. The colours don’t matter as a lot because the values do. Your topic might be any colour you need, however with a purpose to give your topic kind you should have a whole vary of values. From the lightest spotlight to the darkest shadow, you want a cloth that fills these niches.
As soon as they’ve chosen their materials, I’ve them lower out hand-sized chunks of the material, following the prints within the cloth as a information, NOT slicing immediately throughout and thru the print design. As soon as the items are lower out, they’re organized in response to worth, from mild to darkish.
This, then, is the material collage palette.
It’s vital when creating your palette to keep away from slicing your materials into related sized shapes. Create a palette with quite a lot of shapes by letting the design or print within the cloth dictate the place you narrow. On this instance from my 2020 Thursday Night time in My Studio Dwell! shows, “Is It Drafty in Right here? Working in Drafts”, check out the number of shapes included within the palette for my colourful spiral. Natural or irregular lower items of materials mix collectively higher than these which might be lower in a repeated form. Be aware how the materials in my palette mix collectively when positioned subsequent to one another.
I’ve at all times stored a palette of materials close by as I labored on a collage, although not at all times in an organized kind of manner. The thought of encouraging my college students to pre-cut their palette and manage to values, grew out of a state of affairs by which I used to be instructing a category however there was a 24-hour delay in having just a few college students’ patterns enlarged. To occupy their time in a productive manner, I had them take a look at their materials and create their palettes. Despite the fact that they needed to wait till the second day to start out putting their lower cloth shapes, they really made as a lot or extra progress on their collages by the tip of that day than many different college students within the class.
The usefulness of instructing this manner of working was instantly apparent to me.
Nonetheless.
It’s not simple to persuade college students that every one this slicing into of their completely tremendous un-cut materials is a worthwhile effort, after they don’t even know if these materials will, ultimately, even work of their collages. I perceive that it’s a leap-of-faith funding of time to create a palette earlier than beginning to collage. And plenty of of my college students are in order that excited to get began that they skip forward of this step. I simply know that from what I’ve seen from their experiences with cloth collage, I’m going to emphasise it an increasing number of within the class curriculum.
I’ve at all times thought-about cloth collage to be portray with cloth. I’ve developed the method to be as speedy as doable, like portray: I keep away from the making of templates; I exploit glue from a bottle fairly than fusible adhesive; and I prep my materials by making a palette. These strategies all assist me focus on collaging the picture with my pre-cut shapes, fairly than interrupting the method by looking via stacks of material many times.
Pre-cutting a palette of materials in your cloth collage means that you can audition, place, and simply trim every bit. Strive one cloth, reject it, select one other, trim it down, pin in place. Transfer on to the subsequent open space.
Arranging your palette by worth helps you zero in on the material you’re searching for. Are you engaged on a spotlight such because the tip of the nostril or cheek? You recognize the place your lightest valued materials are already. Engaged on a shadow on the aspect of your canine’s head? Listed here are the darkest values of materials.
For my Facial Options eWorkshop, I display the portrait train above. Discover how I’ve organized my palette across the design from mild to darkish. Not solely that, however the mild materials and darkish materials are positioned close to the aspect the place they’ll be used, the lights on the left, the darks on the precise. The lower shapes don’t get used of their entirety, I find yourself utilizing sections of every—components of them right here and there. As I accomplish that, the hand-sized items get gotten smaller, as do the open areas I have to fill.
If you initially create your cloth collage palette, that doesn’t imply you may’t and gained’t add to it. A palette of 12 – 15 cuts of material is an effective quantity to start out with, it will get you going with as little fuss as doable. However you might discover as you progress, that you just want one other cloth colour, print, or worth to fill a selected area of interest. That’s tremendous. It’s anticipated, even. You’re studying what you want as you progress forward.
I hope making a palette helps you start and maintain going in your cloth collage journey. I imagine it is among the easiest methods to present your self a head begin in your subsequent venture.
For a Solar Portrait venture based mostly on my solar portrait sample, I lower the material palette above. Admittedly I bought a bit of carried away with my preliminary choice (however I’m actually wanting ahead to working with them). I’ve positioned my palette onto the middle part of a tri-fold presentation/show foam board. Beneath are images displaying how the perimeters of the board are hinged in order that it may be closed up and can defend my materials after they’re not in use. I believed this was a very intelligent concept. I discussed it to Tom noting that my palette would now be protected from my curious studio cat, Djinni: “In case she decides to nap on them, knock them round or, you already know, puke on them.” No sooner had I closed the shutters on my palette than Djinni hopped onto the desk and hacked up her breakfast onto the folded up board, proving my speculation that sure certainly, a foldable palette floor might save my cloth shapes from the cat.
I encourage my cloth collage college students to go wild with colour and sample, particularly when their topic is one thing like a Quilter’s Fantastical Trophy Fish (above). However how one can do you utilize these wild and loopy materials? How do you create a cloth palette to work from?
Within the video beneath, excerpted from my Susan Carlson Material Collage: Fantastical Fish eWorkshop. I purposely selected among the strongest patterned and colourful materials I might discover in my stash to create a cloth palette for my work-along fish: printed batiks, Kaffe Fasset, Jane Sassaman, Australian Aboriginal, African batik, and several other novelty prints. In truth, I even combined these types of materials in my fish collage. I wished my viewers to know that they will use quite a lot of favourite materials in a collage.
Within the video beneath, I present how I ready my fishy palette by slicing out hand-sized chunks from my choice, trimming them in such a manner that even these very different-colored and -patterned materials begin to work collectively. This capability to mix materials from one to the subsequent is on the coronary heart of how I create a cloth collage.
And all of it begins with the palette.
