The Modern Quilt Guild has introduced its winter challenge for this year. Well, actually, they introduced it close to 2 months ago, but due to my inactivity with the guild last October and November I missed the first sailing of that boat. But, thanks to forums like Flickr, friendly blogs and the fact that the designer at the heart of this challenge, Violet Craft, happens to be a member of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild, I got a deferred chance to participate. That is, once I could pick up a bundle of fabrics at our January meeting for PMQG.
Participating guilds were given yardage of certain prints from Violet's collection for Michael Miller, Madrona Road, which were then cut down to fat-eighths to distribute among guild members.
From what I've gathered, the official challenge from The Modern Quilt Guild is relatively open-ended, the only requirement being that individuals may ONLY use prints from Madrona Road plus any solids they deem. However, each of the individual regional guilds were open to making more specific challenges within their groups. For instance, PMQG specified a size restriction and to use an inspiration word which should then be incorporated into the actual quilt. This challenge did not inspire me so much. But then, at our guild meeting earlier this week it was made clear that we did not HAVE to comply with those restrictions in order to enter the greater challenge category. Now we're talkin'! So, I picked up one of the last available packets of fat-eighths and started thinking.
And put fabric bits up on my design wall.
Now, the real challenge here is the timing. Completed submissions are due on the flickr page by January 31. There is also a flickr page for the larger pool of photos related to this challenge including process photos, but it was emphasized to us that in order to be considered for display at the Michael Miller QuiltCon booth photos MUST be in that first group. I might end up with something smaller than I'd like simply by necessity. Ah well. I've started playing around with a design, but I can tell you now that it doesn't compare with so many of the great pieces already submitted! But part of the joy is just playing along, right?