New Quilting Challenges

In my next post I will show you photos of our last quilting challenge - using a grid composition (I have already posted mine).

That project completed, my friends and I got together yesterday to decide on our next challenge.   Shirley had asked us to bring 3 magazines with us.   She proceeded to place them in a bag and asked us to each pick a number.  Then we had to reach into the bag, choose a magazine without looking, turn to the page number that we had chosen and use whatever was on that page for our inspiration.    With much groaning and complaining we complied.   We barely missed a page full of dead birds and another of a sexy pregnant woman.    We did have some interesting subjects - a bearded paper mache man, some impressionist art, a very colourful grasshopper, a beach with a zillion sea gulls, an Egyptian motif......It was coming down to the wire when someone reminded us of the tryptych we had wanted to do and we all jumped ship.  We are so fickle!!

So we set aside the above-mentioned challenge for now and perused the mags and Shirley's photos until we found a picture of beach change houses on the coast of England with great perspective.   We combined several aspects of different photos and Shirley drew a pattern which we cut into 3 sections.   Each of us has to complete our section separately.   The only rules were that the lines had to meet at the edges (ex houses, skyline etc) and that we stick to the chosen colours (but we can decide on the shade, fabric, plain or patterned etc).  We also decided on a folk art style which suited me because I am just starting to work on a commissioned piece representing a location in Mexico which will also be done in a folk art style.   I'll keep you posted.

Here is a list of ideas we have for future challenges:
1.  Through a microscope -  Start with a piece of patterned fabric - Enlarge an small area of the fabric.   Re-create the enlarged section then applique it onto the original fabric and quilt it.  We got this idea from one of Cathy Miller's quilts.

2.  Sketch to music and create an abstract art quilt.

3. Self-Portrait (this got a lot of groans).  I think it would be fun!

3. Take some fabric scraps, glue, scissors, and a stretched canvas outdoors and work live -  'en pleine air' (I got this idea from someone on my online quilting group and adapted it for us - thanks!)

4.  Take a photo of the centre of a flower and create an abstract from it (I like this one).

5.  Find our 'spirit animal' and quilt it!  Or alternately decide what animal we think we are most like and make an art quilt........a sloth???    Really!



Well this should keep us busy for awhile.   Feel free to try these.   Anyone have any more ideas?