Challenge
I belong to a quilt guild called the Across the Square Quilters out of Charlotte, Michigan. Charlotte is not pronounced like the spider or the city in the Carolinas. It is instead pronounced Char-LOT. Apparently it's after a French explorer who founded the town; or some other such story.
The guild I belong to is comprised of forty or so members and occasionally, one of the members will offer up what we call a "challenge". The member will challenge the rest of the guild (as a whole) to produce something quilty with certain parameters attached. For instance, were were issued an art quilt challenge last summer. The parameters were to think of four things right off the top of our head that meant something to us, incorporate these four things into a wall-sized quilt and it had to be made out of items we normally do not include in our quilts; we call them embellishments.
Here is my entry:
I won second place as voted by our guild members. Several fabric types were included and the quilt represents something each of my boys enjoy: Andrew and his sailboats, Ben and his love of the beach and water, and Caleb for his love of Sunflowers. My love is the quilt on the beach in the center and me riding my horse along said beach. Embellishments included embroidery floss for sea grass, beads for rocks, rick-rack for the flower stem and the outline of the quilt, gauzy fabric for the water foam, and yarn to accent the water waves.
Our next challenge is due in a month, and over the past two days I have built and completed said quilt. Katie May, if you are in this challenge you MAY NOT view the quilt below this line of the post!!!
It was announced last night that there are 26 members who drew for the challenge. By "drew" the person who issued the challenge had us draw four cards out of four boxes. Each box contained a challenge parameter.
The first card was size. I drew 20" x 30"
The second card was pattern/print: I drew Beach
The third card was technique: I drew Applique
The last card was color: I drew Red
I pondered this challenge for quite some time and did have an idea of what I wanted to do with this bouncing around in my little head. We were given a little less then a year to complete the challenge, which is more then sufficient time-wise so why wasn't mine done? Once I sat down this week to design my idea, a whole totally different idea sprang up and this is what the result was: (DON'T LOOK KATIE. YOU BETTER NOT LOOK!!!!)
Here is what I created:
This is definitely one of my favorite creations so far. I love it's simplistic lines and implications. The quilting is hard to see because I wanted all except to the red to be pretty monochromatic, but the quilting lines accentuate each of the pieces elements if you look close enough. I tried to capture the element of a polaroid picture normally taken in the black-and-white format but the sizing parameters may have thrown that off a bit.
As each of our challenges are issued, I wonder to myself why I even get involved. They take a lot of time (thus the name "challenge"), and are generally just something else hanging around the house that I need to find a spot for; and I'm running out of spots.
But after I complete a piece, I remember that some member of my family or even a friend will end up with this long after I'm worm food. Whether they appreciate the piece or not I'll never know, but making it is a great experience and time well worth the effort.
Meanwhile, DW is in the shop for a few days because I decided to jam him up a bit on an outer border. Apparently I messed up the timing and I have not a clue when I'll get him back, so this is a nice time to get caught up on those UFO's and do things like challenge quilts.
The guild I belong to is comprised of forty or so members and occasionally, one of the members will offer up what we call a "challenge". The member will challenge the rest of the guild (as a whole) to produce something quilty with certain parameters attached. For instance, were were issued an art quilt challenge last summer. The parameters were to think of four things right off the top of our head that meant something to us, incorporate these four things into a wall-sized quilt and it had to be made out of items we normally do not include in our quilts; we call them embellishments.
Here is my entry:
 |
| 2013 Art Quilt Challenge issued by MJ Barker |
I won second place as voted by our guild members. Several fabric types were included and the quilt represents something each of my boys enjoy: Andrew and his sailboats, Ben and his love of the beach and water, and Caleb for his love of Sunflowers. My love is the quilt on the beach in the center and me riding my horse along said beach. Embellishments included embroidery floss for sea grass, beads for rocks, rick-rack for the flower stem and the outline of the quilt, gauzy fabric for the water foam, and yarn to accent the water waves.
Our next challenge is due in a month, and over the past two days I have built and completed said quilt. Katie May, if you are in this challenge you MAY NOT view the quilt below this line of the post!!!
It was announced last night that there are 26 members who drew for the challenge. By "drew" the person who issued the challenge had us draw four cards out of four boxes. Each box contained a challenge parameter.
The first card was size. I drew 20" x 30"
The second card was pattern/print: I drew Beach
The third card was technique: I drew Applique
The last card was color: I drew Red
I pondered this challenge for quite some time and did have an idea of what I wanted to do with this bouncing around in my little head. We were given a little less then a year to complete the challenge, which is more then sufficient time-wise so why wasn't mine done? Once I sat down this week to design my idea, a whole totally different idea sprang up and this is what the result was: (DON'T LOOK KATIE. YOU BETTER NOT LOOK!!!!)
Here is what I created:
 |
| A challenge quilt issued by R. Hodge for 2014 |
This is definitely one of my favorite creations so far. I love it's simplistic lines and implications. The quilting is hard to see because I wanted all except to the red to be pretty monochromatic, but the quilting lines accentuate each of the pieces elements if you look close enough. I tried to capture the element of a polaroid picture normally taken in the black-and-white format but the sizing parameters may have thrown that off a bit.
As each of our challenges are issued, I wonder to myself why I even get involved. They take a lot of time (thus the name "challenge"), and are generally just something else hanging around the house that I need to find a spot for; and I'm running out of spots.
But after I complete a piece, I remember that some member of my family or even a friend will end up with this long after I'm worm food. Whether they appreciate the piece or not I'll never know, but making it is a great experience and time well worth the effort.
Meanwhile, DW is in the shop for a few days because I decided to jam him up a bit on an outer border. Apparently I messed up the timing and I have not a clue when I'll get him back, so this is a nice time to get caught up on those UFO's and do things like challenge quilts.
I looked. My cards were the biggest size possible (1,000x1,000 maybe?), stained glass (BLEH!), sports (eh?) and blue. So make that 25 people in the challenge. R. tried to tell me to make a soccer ball, I told her I'm not making something I don't want. But yours is great. And I haven't seen any of the challenge quilts for the art quilt, but yours is cool!
ReplyDeleteShame on you girlfriend. Oh well, it's hard for me to keep a secret especially when I really, really like what I came up with. Your challenge is tough. I've been thinking about it a few days and all I could come up with is maybe a mixing/serving bowl or a room with a stained glass light overhead. Do you remember that restaurant in downtown Lansing called Tiffany's. Maybe you could do something with that (you would have to research it though because I believe it has been out of business for quite some time now). It was very elegant but had kind of a sports undertone to it.
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