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Art Quilt Collage – A Course Review

Hi!

This week I’ve had a bit of a treat, which has actually become a bit of a revelation, which, I fear, may be about to become a bit of a passion… I have learnt something new through a fabulous short lecture course on Art Quilt Collage, and I am inspired now to just get playing!

I watched the “Inspiring Ideas for Art Quilting” by instructor Deborah Boschert from Creative Spark Learning  and I love the ideas she presented and how she made it seem so easy and do-able to  get playing with some ideas for art quilt collages, using fabric, and supplies I pretty much had on hand.

Review:

Deborah’s course is in three easy-to-watch, play-on-demand videos on the online learning platform called Creative Spark, from publishers C&T. The platform itself is easy to navigate, and I really enjoyed this course.

Deborah is all about creating art with fabric, paint and stitch, and this course is based around a few chapters from her book “Art Quilt Collage”.

She explained all about inspiration and fabric selection, then surface design (with paint), and lastly how to embellish and add another layer of interest with stitching, both by machine and by hand.

Her techniques include raw edge fused applique, and broderie perse, as well as a great selection of easy hand embroidery stitches.

I feel there’s a different sense of freedom that you can gain through this style of personal, expressive quilting.  As Deborah explained- you’re creating art for the wall – these pieces will not be washed or cuddled up with, and from a technical side, that also means that the ‘rules’ of making quilts don’t seem to apply.  You can just play with fabric and construct pieces as you like, without having to worry about things like seams or points matching!

Check out some of Deborah’s stunning art quilt collage pieces:

You can see some detail in the image below of fused applique, hand and machine quilted stitches and how handwriting can add another layer of interest.

The image below shows several different techniques, including broderie perse, hand embroidery, and interesting surface textures from handwriting on fabric, as well as stenciling and machine quilting.

In the first video, Deborah talks about where to find inspiration for your own art quilt collages. One example (below) shows a photo with interesting colours; the fabric pull Deborah did, based on that photo, and then the finished piece she made using those fabrics.

I love a bit of hand stitching, and adding it to these fused applique collage quilts is just another level of fun!

My Turn:

So, having finished the course, I decided to try it myself.

I took an hour today and decided to just play, following some of Deborah’s suggestions, and just seeing what I could come up with.  Can I say too how much fun I had?!?  No rules, no writing up patterns, and no preconceived ideas!

I took the suggestion of finding a feature fabric, and getting colours and fabrics to coordinate with it. Not all fabrics made the cut either, but then they didn’t have to – it just gave me a starting point.

I made a tiny 4 inch square scene –

The back – you can see the machine stitching, as well as a couple of hand stitched embellishments.  Not super neat, but it does the trick!

…and the front.

I decided to frame mine as a mini quilt, and I’m thinking “Midsummer’s Eve” might be a good name.

In short, this was a great course on “Inspiring Ideas for Art Quilt Collage”, and I’m thrilled that the instruction provided was more than enough to get me started and making my own collage art quilts.  This is something I’ll be doing more of, and I can recommend this course from Deborah Boschert and Creative Spark wholeheartedly. (Full disclosure too – I’m not making any money from this review, but I do think there’s some great content and it is worth checking out if you’re interested.)

 

Fun part – Creative Spark have given me one of these courses from Deborah  as a Free course to giveaway!

To be in the running for access to this class for Free, just leave a comment below letting us know why you’d like to try Art Quilt Collage, and we’ll choose one lucky reader for this next Wednesday.

Enjoy your week!