Its been a few weeks since I was teaching these classes and a couple of students have sent me photos of their completed projects. It is really gratifying for a teacher to see that completed work because you then know they enjoyed the workshop enough to spend time working on it and to complete that piece  and not add it to their pile of UFO's.

This was a pet portrait created by Joy of her cat. In the first photo you see how she had made her pattern and some of the work in progress made during the class. And then the second photo a couple of weeks later when she has finished the collage process, decided on her background and finished it with free motion quilting and some borders. I especially love the addition of the leaves.

This piece was from my Fish, Frogs and reptiles class and Penni decided she wanted to make the Triggerfish. You can see she had fun fussy cutting the butterflies and dragonfly in the first photo. Then in the finished one I love the small frog riding on the tail, the pink lips :)  and that she went to the extra effort of making all those small fish. They are perfect. She cleverly found a batik fabric to use as the water and then the addition of the spotted bubbles is so fun.

This is one of the Pet Portraits from the class I taught for Pinetree Quilt Guild in Grass Valley. This was a two day class when students had to spend the first half of the first day drawing their pattern from the photograph. Now in my 1-day Pet Portrait class we use a photocopied enlargement to work from. This lady did a great job and you can see how it changes once the free-motion quilting is added. A dramatic improvement when another element is used, texture and more detail.

The Pinetree Quilt Guild holds their annual quilt show the  weekend of May 5th and 6th at the Nevada County Fairgrounds and is always a wonderful show. The ladies from the class I taught are planning on exhibiting all the Pet Portraits together for a mini exhibit. I can't wait to see it. I will add a few photos of some of their work-in-progress here.

If this type of fabric collage speaks to you and you would love to learn the technique for an intuitive method for selecting and cutting your fabric, it looks like you need to join me for 4 days of Fabric Collage Addiction at Zephyr Point this Fall. Look up the Artistic Alchemy Blog for more details and see the fun teachers that you can hang out with Artistic Alchemy