My Mahone Bay Quilters Guild bee, the Cove Quilters have just completed our second challenge. We have been inspired by the Twelve x 12 Challenge that a group of art quilters have done (and I believe they are now on their second round), they have had an exhibition and have written a book about their experience. We are happy to just complete our challenges!
Our first challenge was just called "Birds", thanks to Sandra R, who was the instigator of this project. For this next challenge, Linda M selected about 15 bars of chocolate and types of candy, put them in a bag and we each drew one. This blind choice was to be our inspiration for the next challenge. We could use the name, the colours of the wrapper or the bar/candy itself to be the inspiration. There were some easy ones and some challenges for sure. The only criteria is that they have to be 12" square and finished. We are encouraged to try new techniques and to be challenged, create out of our box or comfort zone.
My challenge is "My Very Educated Mother..." (Just Showed Us Nine Planets). My chocolate bar was the ...Mars Bar! The sun and planets are fused, I used stitches on my sewing machine (Pfaff 2046) that I had never used before and I used beads for embellishment, something I had done very little of and I think I sewed each one on differently, Is there a "right" way?
All eight challenges. Can you guess the chocolate bars or candy?
Vicki's challenge - a Wish bar
Linda H's challenge - a Cherry Blossom
Linda M's challenge - Coffee Crisp
Sandy T's challenge - Oh Henry!
Donna's challenge - Turtles
Heather's challenge - Starburst - Heather also wrote about her challenge on her blog.
Sandra R's challenge - Mirage
Our next theme is "paint". I chose a lot of different paint chips and put 2 in each envelope (I did 12 envelopes so that the last person would still have a choice). On the front of the envelope I wrote "house paint, painted lady and paint the town..." They can use one, two or all three of these themes and they must use the 2 colours of paint in their bloc. It will certainly be interesting to see what they come up with.
To get the afternoon off to a wonderful start Linda M served these beautiful strawberries dipped in chocolate. We finished the afternoon with Linda's wonderful Bailey's dessert. It was a sweet afternoon!