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...

Comments

No Cameras Fell Into the Gorge Today

We strolled through downtown to the railway station this morning to catch the train from Dunedin into the Taieri Gorge. The Dunedin Railway Station was opened in 1906 and is referred to as the Gingerbread House due to its ornate embellishments. Dunedin Railway Station We made the four hour roundtrip through the Taieri Gorge in 1937 wooden body passenger coach. Wood was used to keep the carriages cooler in the summer months. The passage consisted of 12 tunnels and innumerable bridges (according to the brochure). We started in an industrial section of Dunedin before moving to the rural outskirts. From there the countryside included rolling hills, horse pastures, and sheep farms before changing to forests and the deep gorge of the Taieri River. I found it amazing that a railroad line was built so long ago through such rugged terrain. Often the train trestle was high above the canyon. We hung out the windows and stood between the cars to ...

No One Died in Auckland Today...

For a moment, we were wondering if we were going to make it out of LAX. We asked for directions and ended up outside the terminal and on a a shuttle bus to the international terminal. I'm not sure if we could have gotten there without going outside, but it was a long way between terminals and ate into our 2.5 hour layover pretty quickly. The Air New Zealand plane was a 777 and we had upgraded our seats to a "sky couch". That didn't work out as hoped, but it gave us all 3 seats in the row so that was good. The conceptual drawing showed the footrest flipping out into a bed that two can sleep on. So picture the width of a normal 3-seat airplane aisle. Now picture Shawn and me lounging in that space...yeah, that didn't happen. But, all in all, for a 12-hour flight it wasn't terrible. Air New Zealand in Auckland First view of New Zealand Shawn bravely tackled driving on the left side of the road. It was even more of an adventu...

Trump and Poo

This morning we had breakfast at the B&B (hence the second B). Our hostess Lisa was in a bit of a tizzy because she had forgotten the electricity would be turned off on her street from 9:00 to 4:00 today while they replaced wooden power poles with concrete poles. She was trying to figure out if she should wake all the other guests and let them know, and she was also trying to figure out how she was going to get all the linens washed for the next batch of guests. Maybe running a B&B isn't as quaint as we thought, so we'll have to come up with a new retirement plan (just kidding Carol and Martie, we're not moving to NZ). The couple at breakfast with us was from Scotland. They visit NZ quite often because their only child lives here. About ten years ago, she took a gap year after college and travelled down the west coast of Mexico and South America finally ending in New Zealand for ski season. Unfortunately, it was a bad snow season that ...

Kristin Laura

Search This Blog