Challenges

I do love a challenge! I've only won once, but I still like taking a concept and turning it into a block or a quilt. It is a great mental exercise and keeps the creative juices flowing.

First up is our Guild's London Challenge. Our guild is so excited to be hosting the CQA Quilt Ontario in 2011, that we issued a challenge to create a 12 inch block that represents our city of London. These pieces will be hung together as a Welcome to London greeting to the visitors. You can read about the winners here and see all the pieces here.

I knew early on I wanted to practice my reverse applique. Our city is known as the Forest City, so a tree or trees would definitely be in my piece...Just like the other London we have a Thames River. I live right at the forks of the river and walk over the river every day to get to work... I incorporated the tree and the forks of the river into the word London...I machine quilted buildings in the background to indicate the urban setting that is nestled between the trees and the river as well as the extensive bicycle paths that run along the river. I blanket stitched the edges with beads.

The other challenge I participated in was the Joseph Schneider Haus Block challenge "Snow on the Roof, Fire in the Hearth"...I almost didn't participate, because the only thing that I could think of was just a plain log cabin block...but eventually I came up with 4 log cabin blocks combined to actually look like a log cabin...not too outstanding, but it does the trick.

We had to use plain white fabric and some red fabric in our design. The next couple of photos are courtesy of the Quilt Rat and show the block made into the quilt which will be used for fundraising. Congratulations to the Quilt Rat for her first place block! You can read about her block and see more photos here.