Have you heard of Collage Quilting? I hadn’t. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not much of a quilter. I think I started a quilt many years ago. I have no idea what happened to it. I do have a bunch of squares cut out too. I’m slowly adding more squares to that little stash, but I’ve never made a quilt. I have made a number of very simple lap quilts and quillows, but I don’t consider that quilting.

There are a few things that have grabbed my attention from one look, and collage quilting is one of them.

Look at this! I took one look at this and I started searching. This is a Laura Heine collage quilt pattern, and it’s so adorable! I love how unique it is.

When I looked for her patterns, look what I found:Oh! I LOVE it!

The links to the patterns are in the photos in case you fall in love like I did. And I’m only showing you a few of her patterns.

I had to get the pincushion! In fact, I found a local one-day course and have been working on this pincushion quilt. I was cutting out flowers for it when I was in the mountains last month.

This one is adorable. But I can’t buy them all. So I’m working on the pincushion for now.Just gorgeous!

Even though I’m working on the pincushion, there’s one pattern I love even more. But I wanted to start smaller and get a little practice in first. Look at this!This is over-the-top gorgeous. I did buy the pattern for this one, and will slowly (not as slowly as I’m amassing quilt squares) buy fabrics to make this gorgeous quilt.

My Pincushion

  Again, never having quilted before, I was intimidated to even start this. There was some prep work that needed to be done ahead of the class. Cutting out flowers and other elements to add to our quilts. That wasn’t hard. Then there was making the background. That was daunting.

I finally gave myself a mental push and made a simple pieced background. It turns out I did more work for this background than I needed. The backgrounds can be collaged too.

Here’s how my Pincushion was taking shape before the class.

One of the neat things about these collage quilts is this pincushion isn’t stuck down yet. It has Steam-a-Seam 2 on the back which makes it tacky, and it sticks. But until I iron it down, it can be moved around! That was very helpful in the class.

Collage Class

Last weekend was the collage class. It was taught by Terry Rowland. She’s amazing. She brought a number of her quilts to show us, and was so helpful instructing us all individually, and as a class. One of the things she told me right away was no straight lines.

I had straight lines in my pincushion.I’ve learned my lesson, and to cover this up, I’ve collaged over those straight edges.No more straight lines. At least not visible ones.

A collage quilt is definitely not a project you can complete in a day. I had a simple background done, most of my pincushion, and all my collage elements fused with Steam-a-Seam 2 and cut out. After working on it all day in class, I was only to the point of ironing it all in place.

Here’s my collage quilt after the class. It will take a little longer to finish it up. I’m so very happy with it so far.There’s quite a difference in the quilt already. The before-class, and after-class photos are below.This still needs a backing, some basic quilting done to it, and the edges bound. I’m not quite sure when I’ll have this finished, but I’m loving it already  and look forward to working on it more.

Happy creating!