Our guild’s challenge quilt is due in three weeks. It’s secret until then, so I can’t show photos of it now, but I can say I’m excited about what I’m doing. Tess, our Challenge Queen, gives us the annual specifications in February with the deadline being our November meeting. I typically think about it, research photos and patterns, basically collecting thoughts until October or so when I have no choice but to make something.
There are years when I’ve started early, but I often aborted the first plan. There have been exceptions; occasions when I started earlier than usual, stayed focused on a project that took a lot of time, and brought it to completion ahead of schedule. But several have been done the week before the due date.
On the single occasion when I completed the project early, I really disliked the quilt and abandoned the idea of using it as my entry. The challenge in 2013 was “ Dare to be Square” or something like that. Tess always comes up with catchy titles. The rule was that the quilt must be pieced (no appliqué!) and every piece must be a square. In October, I sprang into panic mode, grabbed a half-yard cut of a bold fish print by Brandon Mably, some hand-dyed fabrics of similar colors, and started cutting squares.
I cut the largest square I could from the focus print (20” finished. (I know – it must have been a generous half-yard cut)), then cut smaller squares from the fish fabric and the others. 20” finished was a nice measure to use as the reference. It was easy to patch together units using 1”, 2”, 4”, 5”, 10” components.
As the project grew on the design wall, I had fun finishing a fish. Where one had been cut off, I could find missing components of that fellow somewhere else in the smaller squares and place it close by to make his image extend into the other spaces. I even discovered a batik striped fabric that mimicked the background of Mably’s fish and inserted that.
As the “squarequarium” grew on my design wall, I began imagining quilting lines. I could stitch even more of the missing parts of fish bodies, add bubbles in the water, and enhance fish fins and tails. Oh, my, how fun was that?
I sewed quickly to get the piecing done, layered it with cotton batting, and began dancing with my sewing machine. I used some heavy threads on some of the solid spaces, enjoyed stitching lots of free-motion quilting motifs, and especially enjoyed adding the octopus and starfish.
Even after all that, things looked a little “flat”. Eyes. Fish have prominent eyes. So out came the wool, a circle cutter, some buttons, and voila!
A solid blue fabric on the back made the stitching details noticeable. Susan said she liked the back of this quilt better than the front. So for her next birthday, I stitched a fish on blue fabric for her beach house.
This quilt does not contain colors in my house or colors I particularly enjoy using in a quilt. But I love this finished product because seeing it reminds me how much fun a challenge can be.
I called this finished project “Sea Squared.” Some of my math colleagues will notice the reference to a project we worked on for years. The finished size is 40” x 34”.
This year the challenge requires at least three fan blocks, and some yellow fabric. The finished size is prescribed this time: 36” square. My first reaction was “I’m not a fan of the fan block,” but in my research I’ve certainly learned a lot about those historic blocks and their reinterpretations through the years. As a friend said yesterday, “I love our challenges. They force us to think about things differently.” Indeed.
Update: A later post revealed my entry in the fan block challenge. It is here.
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