I belong to a group of fiber artists called ThreadBenders. ThreadBenders is a relatively new group, and we have some delightful and very enthusiastic artists. We recently completed our first “big” guild challenge and 13 of our 16 members participated. I was very impressed with the results!
The challenge was named “Photo Inspiration: Door”. The picture we chose to inspire our quilts was taken by a friend of one of our members in St. Thomas, VI.
You can read the rules and see all of the quilts at: https://threadbendersblog.wordpress.com/
About 5 years ago I took a 10 week class at WCTC about Adobe Photoshop™. It was a great class and I think I’ve forgotten more than I remember because Photoshop™ can do so much. But the things that have stuck with me have been incredibly helpful. One aspect of the program I was particularly interested in was called “transform”. You can do the most amazing things with your pictures by using commands like “skew”, “warp”, “distort”, etc..
Fascinating, but weird. And after making all of these weird variations, what do you do with them?
Well, I chose the last one and made a quilt.
“Stretch, Warp, Abstract” has a very odd outer edge and the portion that stretches across the main body of the quilt was actually made as a separate quilt, and attached after both were quilted. This quilt forced me to come up with new techniques and try a lot of different ones I already had in my bag of tricks. That’s what I love about challenges, and that’s why I take classes and read magazines – to learn new techniques.
I loved making this quilt (well I loved it most of the time 😉 ). It could easily be the most unusual quilt I’ve ever made. I was impressed with the variety and imagination of all the challenge quilts, and I hope you will visit our site to see them: https://threadbendersblog.wordpress.com/
And here’s the icing on the cake. We chose 8 of the quilts to enter in the “Ultimate Guild Challenge” competition held at the AQS show in Grand Rapids, MI and they were accepted! They’ll be traveling to Grand Rapids for the show in August! We’re all very excited!
Once they return, we’ll be looking for venues to display them. If you know of a quilt show, shop, art museum, etc. that would be interested, please let us know by emailing me at .
Gail Maslan says
Geri, Winnie and I are going to the AQS show in Grand Rapids, Friday and Saturday. Hope to see you there!! Gail
Jodi Grzeczka says
Mukwonago’s Crazy Quilters Guild Show in March! Perfect!
Chris Kirsch says
Oh Jodi, That would be great! Please email me and let me know whom to contact ?.
Evelyn Link says
Loved the challenge and loved what you did with it.