Inspiration can be found in all things, right? Just a couple of weeks ago my wheels were set in motion after seeing this blog post by Brooke of the blog Apriltwoeighty about taking up the needle and thread again for a "Fringe"-inspired quilt she's been working on.

I, too, am a fan of the show (though a season behind, I must admit) and I think her quilt idea is inspired! It's also unique, and I wouldn't want to do anything to change that. The designer in me wishes to respect other people's great ideas and simply use it as motivation for my own projects. But what a wealth of subject matter it affords!

That said, I happened to read that blog entry while I was coming to the end of re-watching a favorite, though not-so-critically-acclaimed, Joss Whedon show, Dollhouse. And all I could think about for days was finding ways of bringing the characters and themes of the show to some quilty fruition.

A still from one of the episodes, showing most of the core cast. — A still from one of the episodes, showing *most* of the core cast.

It's another fun sci-fi show based in our reality, just turned up a notch toward a somewhat darker view of the near future. And for a show about people who are reprogrammed to be whomever the client orders at any given time, the characters are really well fleshed out and fully 3-D.

Which is part of what makes this eminent project enticing.

Also, there's an image that may lend itself well to being translated into a quilt block...

...but not an easy one. I even had to go in search of a protractor! When was the last time you sought out a protractor?? 72°, baby! And the sketches commenced.

and of course the fabric selection challenge... just a few for now.

Alpha, Ballard, Langton, Victor/Anthony, Topher, Adele.

And only tangentially related, as I write this post, while Austin is hosting the first annual QuiltCon, Portland is host to just a plain old regular Comic-Con which MAY have some of the actors, writers and creators of these favorite shows of mine in attendance. To stalk or not to stalk, that is the question...

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?