Thursday, June 18, 2009

challenge quilts

Hi everyone.
As a member of the Great Lakes Professional Machine Quilters Association, I participated in the guild challenge. We were pretty much all to piece the same quilt top and then quilt as desired. I tend to have difficulty leaving someone else's pattern alone so I didn't follow the rules explicitly. But I saw that I wasn't the only one that had that problem. The border was supposed to be a lighter beige and I added the flat red piping between the setting triangles and the border. I am sure glad there are no worries about doing right or wrong. When I get a good look at the other challenge quilts, I will be anxious to see how well everyone else followed directions. I actually finished this almost a month ago, so I don't know Y it has taken me this long to post it, but here it is.

I am sorry that I quilted it before I took Sally Terry's Hooked on Feather's class. But I wanted to turn it in that day. I didn't realize that it is an ongoing challenge. They hope to display them at area quilt shows to promote longarm quilting I guess. I don't intend to quilt for hire, but thought I ought to particpate for the sake of practice. Maybe more of the quilters would join in then. Many of our members do not do custom quilting and just quilt edge to edge. I think many of them haven't participated. Great that they have that option. Who needs another obligation. Overall, I don't think I did too badly considering I have only had my machine since Christmas time.

I have issued design challenges in the past at quilt shops that were actually held as mystery classes. That's how I got a bunch of samples using my Thirtysomething technique for the first book. I ought to put more challenges together for the next Thirtysomething book. Anyone interested? Well, maybe next winter? I'd love to hear how well you follow challenge "rules". Do tell.
Sew long,

1 comment:

Beena said...

I think it's gorgeous! And I think you did just the right amount of feather quilting combined with other motifs to make it even more visually interesting. I think if you had gone the "all feathers" route with this quilt, it would not have been as nice as this. You did a beautiful job!