Laura Heine's Collage Sea Turtle Art Quilt

First of all this is not my design or my quilt.  However, I jumped at the chance to take this collage quilting technique class with Lisa B. at Ann Arbor Sewing Center so I could learn how it was created.  Let me give credit to the designer, Laura Heine.  This particular design is called "Seawell".

I have been passionate about collage since forever.  However, I am fairly new at traditional quilt construction let alone art quilt construction so I thought it would be advantageous to learn how to create this the "right" way.  Later I can break all the rules when I create my own collages! (evil grin)

Isn't it fantastic! I was blown away by the number of layers and bits of fabric used.  Pieces you'd think were all one fabric were mainly collages of several different fabrics. For example: the shell of the sea turtle has several multi-colored segments that make it up.  I thought each segment was one fabric. Not at all!  There are probably 3-4 layers or more of several fabrics to create one segment on that shell!  That blew me away.  How about you?

    

Collaborative Welcome Sign

Our Fiber Guild is currently working on a collaborative Welcome sign for the entry of Salt Valley Arts.  If you've been there, you've probably noticed the ugly electrical panel covered by an equally ugly piece of plywood.  Each artist selected a letter or a few from the phrase: "Welcome to Salt Valley Arts".  To keep it quirky, we used different fonts, upper and lower case, and the artist chose color, background, etc.  Here is my sketch:

These are a few of my glue resist panels that I plan to use as tools to represent the diversity of the artists and the media they use.  We've had several volunteers create a camera, scissors, printmaking examples, crocheting, weaving, quilting, knitting, and even some small glass pieces just to name a few!

As the glue dries...

Color testing

As I continue to collect all the panels, I've been laying them out to see the direction it's heading.  I think it is going to be fun and funky!

 It has happened!  My quilt, "I Want to Give You the World has been reproduced and is hanging on the side of the old News and Antiques Building in downtown Saline, Michigan!  To say I am proud is an understatement.  Below are some pics of my process.

I have some new ideas incubating from my road trip out west. Stay tuned...

Lauren and Enghui posing with their wedding gift.