The "Blues" Challenge

Our "Blues" challenge was due this week (well, it was due in December 2014 but who's quibbling?!). Here are some of the results, and everybody had done an outstanding job.  It's always so exciting to see how creative people are with the same instructions. There are still a couple of entries missing but hope to see them soon. Here's the challenge fabric (complete with cat hair compliments of Pretzel), a pretty batik with swirly paisleys.





Meanwhile, here's Pauline's quilt. She opted for the colour "blue" and matched the fabrics beautifully. The stitching also makes her pieces pop, and the binding incorporates the challenge fabric too. A delightful entry.

 Jean is a local quilter who participated in the challenge, and joined us for the evening. We hope to see her more often, she's a wonderful quilter and crafter. Here's Jean's entry - look at those tiny windmill blocks. and the tucked-in prairie points on the border. Jean machine quilts all her quilts, including this one. So pretty.

 Here's a detail from Jean's quilt, you can see the prairie point border with all the beading to fasten them. Lots of work in this.

Here's Donna's quilt. I hummed and hah-ed until I had a flash of inspiration. Blues music comes from the slaves on America's plantations originally, and expresses their sadness about their life. I wanted to represent that with the teardrops. Then I put the flower in to represent hope. All hand stitched. I added some beads I discovered to make the teardrops glisten.

This was our haul before Marg arrived.

 Here's Marg's quilt, a really interesting and beautiful take on the theme. She added music, a guitar and a saxophone, blue birds, lovely stitching, and quite a bit of beading and bling. It's a very cheerful quilt and I love the strings on the guitar!

Annette was the first to post, and she chose the "Blues Train" as a theme.The Blues Train is an event where people spend the evening on the train listening to various blues bands and generally having a good time.  The star and binding are made from the challenge fabric, and Annette experimented with the letter stitching on her machine. It turned out beautifully!

Thanks everybody for joining my challenge, it's always great fun.

Jean was finishing the binding on her Ricky Timms quilt, so we needed to add this to the show n tell part of the evening. Isn't it magnificent?! I added a close-up of the quilting detail (all done by Jean on her machine).  This lovely lady is seriously talented!