Our quilt guild’s annual challenge quilts were revealed last week. You may remember the challenge this year was Little Girls. Members were asked to turn back their inner clocks to days of their childhood and make a quilt representing some memory from those carefree days.
While I was working on my entry, I hoped everyone was having as much fun with their creation as I was. Every idea that came across my mind prompted memories I had long forgotten and the actual construction of my entry made me giggle like a little girl.
As the quilts were revealed, it seemed that others experienced some of the same thrills I did.
As the Challenge leader this year, I made the ribbons. I had loads of fun painting these little girls on fabric, appliquéing their dresses, and attaching streamers from my stash of fabric and rickrack.
Our procedure is to bring our entries in plain brown paper bags with nothing that will reveal the maker’s identity. This year, contestants were asked to write a sentence or two telling the story behind the quilt. Volunteers hang the quilts and assign numbers to them. Members vote on their favorite and play “Guess the Maker” – using knowledge of individual styles of quiltmaking to assist in identifying the creator of each quilt hanging.
Votes are tabulated as the business meeting is conducted, then ribbons are awarded. Every maker then shares the story behind the quilt she entered while participants check their guesses of makers’ identities.
Quilts in this Little Girl Challenge were especially precious.
Carol shared that her two daughters had input into her creation…one said you have to include sequins..another insisted she include a very decorated birthday cake. Looks like I’m not the only one whose daughter has input.Susan was able to attach meaning to the fabrics in a piece she made using English Paper Piecing techniques from a designer she recently discovered…aren’t those unending connections priceless?Helen’s piece, With Love 2 Grandmothers, included photos of her grandmothers and won the 3rd place ribbon. Helen even had a historical backing on hers – a collage of doilies and laces she collected at a flea market.Gladys, our gal from Texas, couldn’t resist including a state map though she knew it would give her identity away – and on her tag she wrote of sandwiches from fresh tomatoes on the farm.Marie may have embraced the little girl inside more enthusiastically than most…she made three entries. One, Windows to the World, used photographs printed on fabric and pieced in a landscape variation of a log cabin block. Assembled, they reminded her of window panes in her childhood home. This quilt was the second place winner.In another entry, Marie’s Starlit Cabin was a tribute to the memory of a quilt pieced by her grandmother and quilted by her mother. Marie carried the quilt and the love it held when she left home for college.And Marie’s third entry was Lily Learns to Sew. Last summer, Marie spent time teaching a young girl in the neighborhood who wanted to learn to sew. Marie painted sewing notions on fabric using watercolor; then used rail fence blocks (the same block she and Lily included in Lily’s first quilt) to surround it. And what little girl doesn’t love red polka dots?Another quilter named Carol depicted memories of hopscotch with her friends. She used a coloring book as a basis for her appliquéd little girl.Shirley’s entry depicts the love she and her mother share of growing flowers in the yard and of beautiful embroidery.Sally’s Grandmother’s Flower Garden block is a tribute to her maternalgrandmother. Sally even connected the background quilting to her lattices in her grandmother’s rose garden.
My piece, Playhouse in the Chicken Yard, was the lucky winner of the blue ribbon. I’ll share details of its story and its construction in the next blog post.
Even members who didn’t get their quilt finished for one reason or another had stories to share. Becky told of hanging blackout curtains over their windows during WWII and of coloring on the papers that their dry cleaning came in.
Marsha had memories of milk bottles being delivered to her house and hopes to make a quilt depicting that yet. Life got in the way of her putting those milk bottles on a textile piece in time for the challenge.
Carol won the “Guess The Maker” competition. Her reward is a fabric covered Little Girls Journal where she can record memories of making this quilt or more memories from her life as a little girl.
I've stitched my way through life. Early skills in utilitarian and decorative sewing have merged with art in the world of quiltmaking. My love of journaling has now crossed into the cloth world, too. I love old songs, old souls, old words; my collections attest to my fascination with memories.
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