President's Challenge

I love a challenge and always look forward to the president's annual challenge in my quilt guild. It's a great opportunity to try new techniques (like my 2009 challenge quilt when I added Indian shisha mirrors and my husband's reaction was "really?"). As usual, this year's challenge started with the given fabric, to which my first reaction is always "yuck". She gave us a kind flimsy red fabric with black swirls and a black and white mottled fabric. We were told we could add 2 more fabrics, but unfortunately I missed the caveat that one had to be a primary color. So as the week passed by, I went out and bought various red, white and black fabrics and thought up numerous designs. When I finally sat down to work on my quilt, I reread the challenge instructions and noticed the primary color stipulation. That changed everything! What primary color will look good with red, white and black?

After a little research on color theory, I decided to add cyan to my palette based on the CMY primaries.

I was given the 2 fabrics on the left and I added the 2 fabrics on the right

I recently saw an interesting quilt hanging in a quilt shop in San Jose (that didn't allow photography, what's up with that?). I made a quick sketch of the block and figured out how to make it with a nifty triangle ruler I've had for years but never used. I made up a few sample blocks, and although I like them and may make a quilt using that block pattern one day, it just wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted something more free form and organic, so I made strip sets with gentle curves (to match my limited skills with curved piecing).

Original block idea on left, and final free from block design on right

My plan was to create red blocks and black blocks with cyan and white/black curved strips. Alternating eight of each for a 16-block quilt. Well the red fabric was not as wide as the black, so I only ended up with5 red blocks. This threw my setting into chaos, and I needed to come up with 3 more blocks. I decided to use that nifty ruler and made curvy strip sets with the remaining white/black and cyan fabric. Quilt making is so serendipitous when you have limited fabric, don't measure anything and make design decisions on the fly..

We will see what this weekend brings when I decide how to layout, join and quilt the 16 blocks...

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