A Beginning to Collage Quilts

I guess with a new technique you have to start somewhere. With fabric collage, I started with an online course with Susan Carlson. it was all about using multiple colours in very different fabrics to achieve this result. It is not one of my best quilts but i did learn a lot and when I look at it now with fresh eyes I find the colourways interesting. The palette of the spiral moves from black to green but there is no blue fabric in the piece - maybe I needed to coil in further to lead the eye from green to blue. A lot of the lighter background fabrics and from my own printing whereas the spiral fabrics are mainly scraps of commercial prints. I do note I used a lot of African and native prints. I collected quite a few of these over the years but haven’t really used them in my work. I love the African Savannahs but am more drawn to take from my New Zealand heritage in most of my work - that and my travel dialogues. Maybe one day I will get to Kenya and see the savannahs for myself.

The koru form is all about growth and unfurling so as a subject for where I was at at this time it was probably appropriate. Susan glue tacks he fabrics initially and I have modified that system to better suit my own needs. Over the next little while i will show some more of my collage quilts and where they lead