Friday, November 7, 2014

Challenging Quilts

It has been five years -- longer than I thought -- since Jennifer and I made our first challenge quilts.  Challenge quilts, for the uninitiated, are where people take the same set of fabrics, make their separate pieces, and then find out what each other came up with.  In the first challenge, Jennifer and I showed that we think along alarmingly similar lines.




We had so much fun with that that we decided we wanted to do it again! In the mock-formal document we drew up to give us a set of rules, we gave ourselves a generous deadline: January 1, 2013. Jennifer finished hers a while ago. I made mine last month.

The challenge fabrics we picked turned out to be... challenging. With each of us picking half the fabrics independently of the other, we ended up with a pretty but somewhat monotonous palette of blues and greens with a vivid orange outlier. Here's Jennifer, who put some time and traditional craft into hers:


And here's mine, which was guided by the design principle of "let's get this thing done, fast":





The Specs

Name: Jennifer Challenge Quilt II.
Serial Number: I've lost track.

Dimensions: dunno
Batting: An old blanket I found somewhere.
Backing: Another low quality synthetic material that was, technically speaking, both "stretchy" and "slippery."  It actually came as a tube of fabric, but I cut it lengthwise so as to use a single layer. 
Quilting: Meandering lines running lengthwise across the quilt.

Begun: October, 2014.
Finished: October, 2014.

Intended Use/Display: Blanket for use.
Provenance: I have no particular plans for what will happen to it.

2 comments:

Rebel said...

lol - I am quite familiar with that design principle. Yours looks great!!! I love the orange edging, just enough to give a good contrast.

Elizabeth said...

I quite like it. At first the orange was offputting but now it is strangely attractive.