Challenge Article

The Gisborne Gazette kindly printed the article about the unveiling of our challenge quilts.
The photo was compliments of Sue. I liked how they kept the tip of Annette's hat in the picture.
On to the next challenge!

Challenges for 2016

Donna proposed a couple of challenges to her her groups. Just in case anyone else wants to join - here are the outlines -

1.     The Country Challenge

Pick a country from a bag (or Donna will give you a country), then make a quilt to represent that country. Anything goes, but no bigger than 1 x 1m in size.

     2.     The Sunset Quilt Challenge

Make a landscape quilt that incorporates a sunset. Again, anything goes. Size may range from Postcard size to whatever size you want.

Keep you quilting (e.g. countries) secret, however, you may ask advice from quilters not participating in the challenges. Unveiling end of July 2016.  Have fun!

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!

BBQ Challenge

Some of the group members participated in this year's quilt challenge, The
Black and Bali Quilt (BBQ) challenge was originally organised by the Sunshine Quilters group, but then people in the Wednesday day and evening groups got interested, and the challenge also went on Facebook. The instructions were to make a quilt using black background fabric, use at least one Bali fabric, to make a tryptich (a quilt in 3 parts), and use one new quilting technique.

Sue and Donna participated this year, and Andrea had started hers but didn't get it quite finished. We're hoping for her entry for next year!

Sue made a wonderful New-Zealand inspired quilt, showing three native NZ birds, and some fern leaves. Sue's work is exquisite!

Donna's quilt was more geometric, called "A Diamond Venture", as it is made of lots of paper pieced diamonds. She got the inspiration from the internet, and tried machine piecing with invisible thread as a new technique.

Some of the Gisborne Quilters and Sunshine Quilters joined us at the Gisborne Peak Winery for a lovely lunch on a sunny summer day.