For the second time at my quilt guild, I've participated in our Whisper Challenge.
The first one was for our 2010 show, and you can see it here. There is an explanation of the challenge there too. But, in case you don't feel like clicking over, this is how it works: this time we had 2 sets of quilters in the challenge, one 'team' of 3 quilters, another of 4. The first quilter of each set made a small quilt, based on the same picture. Then they pass their quilt onto the next quilter in line, to use as their inspiration and so on. Only the first quilter in each set saw the picture, the rest of us used our predecessors' quilt to work from.
For this one, I was #4, and the quilt I had to be inspired by was done by one of my guild's most amazing artists - nothing like starting off being a bit intimidated! Yikes!! For a whole month I looked at her quilt every day, trying to come up with an idea for my quilt. Nothing.
Not even a tiny glimmer of an idea.
Sheesh.
Luckily I had an extra month to come up with something....
Since I knew I would be returning my inspiration quilt, I snapped a quick photo of it, so I would have something to refer to.
And then....I went to the Southern California of Quilt Guilds' Meet the Teachers meeting. It was set up more like a quilt show this time & I think there were about 30 teachers in attendance. One of them was Jake Finch, who you may know as one of the co-editors & co-founders of the new Generation Q magazine. I met Jake several years ago at another SCCQG Meet the Teachers meeting, and we've been quilty friends ever since. So I was whining about not being able to think of any ideas for my challenge quilt, that my creative mojo took a hike since I've been unemployed, waaaa-waaaa-waaaaa.
Then I showed her the photo I had taken of my inspiration quilt,
and Jake's comment was
"It needs a UFO!".
DING-DING-DING-DING-DING!!!!
Almost as soon as I got home, I taped some paper together & had my drawing done!
A few days later (you just can't rush into these things, right?), I went to one of my local quilt shops, The Sew n Sew in Glendora, CA, purchased some fusible and found the perfect fabrics to use for it.
Well, except for the space ship.
But I had a thought about that.
My deadline, Friday, May 4th, when I had to turn it in to hang in the quilt show, was LOOMING!
I traced the sections onto my fusible,
even remembering to reverse the pattern!
Yay me!!
Oh yes, about what I used for the space ship.
I didn't have any lamé & didn't feel like trying to find some somewhere.
So I walked into the kitchen & grabbed the aluminum foil.
Fused like a dream!
I stitched the detail lines with copper colored metallic thread.
Being a space ship & all, I thought that would work better in outer space.
Of course, I couldn't have just this UFO floating in the sky.
It HAD to being doing something....
After I had carefully, using my sharpest little scissors,
cut all around the cow, it occured to me that I could have left some of the red background fabric.
Oh well. I still like it. A lot.
I almost forgot!
Yes, I finished sewing the binding on and had it completely finished,
several HOURS before I had to turn it in!
And here you go....
"Hey Jake! Where Are Ya Going?"
With extra special thanks to
JAKE FINCH
for putting the UFO in my head!
Jake, you ROCK!!!
It was fun at the quilt show.
When folks came in, the first quilt area had the quilts from the fabric/show theme challenge, the next area was the Whisper Challenge quilts.
They'd walk into the first & look at all of the quilts & talk about them.
Then they'd go into the Whisper Challenge.
We tried to have a member there to explain how it worked,
then they would look at those.
First the ones on the left.
Then the story board & one quilt on the back.
And finally the quilts on the right,
ending with mine.
And almost every one of them burst into laughter,
and continued into the main part of the show with big smiles on their faces.
AWESOME!
(I'll post pictures from the show after I edit them &
make sure I have the correct info with each one.)
Happy Quilting!!
sue
really cute!
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