Challenge Quilt

Challenge quilt.

I have been involved with a Quilting Guild this year.  Trying to keep up with their projects has kept me very busy.   One of the projects this year was a challenge quilt.  A challenge quilt is when everyone is given one theme or idea and told to go make a quilt.  It is always interesting to see that there can be so many different ways to present a single idea.  

A previous quilt exploring random patterns.

The challenge title was "What's in a Name?"  The basic idea was that you selected some combination of the beginning letter of each of your names: first, middle, maiden, last, nicknames, or multiple middle or last names.  Once you had your initials selected you headed for the paint chip aisle at the local hardware store.  You searched through all the colorful paint chips until you found paint chip colors that corresponded to your initials.  Then you had to sort through those until you found some that could co-ordinate enough to make a quilt.  Then you searched through your fabric stash or went shopping for fabrics in or near those colors.  Then you made a quilt from them.

There were a few rules for the challenge.  The size rule was very liberal.  The perimeter of the quilt could be anywhere from 44 to 140 inches.  The shape of the quilt was open to interpretation.  It could be any shape:  round, square, rectangular, or free form.  You could also add other colors of fabric as needed to make the quilt.  And finally, if you had a quilt already made and you could match the colors of your paint chips, that quilt was acceptable.  You did not have to make a new quilt.  Some of the ladies chose that route.  Being new to the Guild, and having made only a few quilts, I made a new quilt.

Generally, I hand quilt.  However, I have been so tied up with other quilting projects that I decided to machine sew this one.  I have so many quilting projects in play at the moment that I was feeling a little stressed about getting the challenge quilt completed in time.  Besides that, we will be on the road again soon, and the quilting will be sitting at home while I am busy elsewhere.  So this is one of my few machine quilts.

The paint chip colors I selected were Classic Red, Lemon Twist, and Jamaica Bay.  I added and orange and purple just to make the quilt more colorful.  Then I had to decide on a design.  The color, Jamaica Bay was the key here.  I grew up in a beach resort area.  My teenage memories were of blue sky, bright sunshine, colorful sailboat sails, and brightly colored flags fluttering in the breeze.  I wanted to incorporate those ideas into the quilt.  That is why I chose such bright colors.  I did not want to make a picture or landscape quilt, but I did want those memories to be in it.

I decided that rather than make something with a pieced geometric design that I would explore randomness.  This would be my third quilt where I have explored what happens when you let random patterns emerge.  I had five colors.  I assigned each color a number.  Purple was numbered one through four.  Jamaica Bay was five through eight.  Orange was numbered nine through twelve.  Yellow was thirteen through sixteen.  Classic Red was seventeen through twenty.  Then I rolled at twenty sided die.  Whatever number came up was the color of the piece that I sewed onto the strip. Each strip was five pieces long.  Most of the strips were cut at four and a half inches long (11.43 cm long by 1 inch (2.54 cm) wide.  Then I threw in a few shorter pieces and some that were not well cut just to mix it up a bit.

I only had two other rules.  There could be no more than two of the same color on one strip.  On strips sewn next to each other there could be no more than three of the same color next to each other. These rules kept large strips of color from becoming solid dividing lines or large blocks of color from taking over significant portions of the quilt.  So with all this in mind, I started rolling the die and piecing my strips together.  As soon as two strips were completed they were sewn together. Then another strip was made and sewn on.  There was no judging whether this strip went better next to another strip unless it violated the rules above.  If it did, I removed the strip causing the problem and rolled the die to choose another color.  It was all random.  And this is the small quilt that emerged from that.

When held with the long edges lengthwise, it appears to be a series of streaks.  It reminded me a lot of some of the photos I take on my road trips.  The photos I post on my blog of the road trips are the ones that came out crisp and sharp.  You don't see the shots that I missed, where they are blurred as we go speeding by in the car.  This quilt reminds me of those blurred images. 

In my younger years, time seemed to pass more slowly.  I had all the time in the world.  Now that I am older, time seems to pass much more quickly.  The day, is gone in a flash.  A week is over before it seems like it should have begun.  Months fly by and I am not sure where they went.  And Christmas seems like it was just here, but now I must begin to get ready or it will be here again before I know it.  And then this quilt, built on the colors of memories, appears out of randomness.  To me it represents the blur of memories moving past.  I guess you could say that the quilt represents memories moving at the speed of life.

Check back next time for a post on a different project.