Sunday, January 10, 2016

The Whisper Challenge Quilts!


Eight of us Material Mavens started a year ago on a special challenge project, one that was totally separate from the challenges that all of us participate in.  This challenge is called the Whisper Challenge, and it is based on all the old-time party game, Telephone or Whisper.

The way the game worked was that participants sat in a circle.  The first person whispered a sentence to the next person, and then that one whispered to the one seated beside him or her.  By the time the sentence had worked its way around the circle, the last person said the sentence aloud.  Most often, maybe always, the sentence was dramatically different!

The way our challenge worked was that the first quilter (Carolyn) composed a quilt based on a photograph.  She then sent a picture of the quilt, with no other explanation, to quilter #2, who was Tricia.  Looking at Carolyn's quilt, Tricia then composed a quilt that was in some way inspired by some aspect of Carolyn's quilt.

This process then was repeated until all eight of us had composed quilts.

Number 3 was Lois, and then Rita constructed #4.  Judy based her #5 quilt on Rita's, and she sent me a photo of it.  I then composed my #6 quilt and sent a photo to Kathy, #7.  She constructed her quilt, photographed it, and then sent it on to the last quilter, Janet, who despite being confined to bed, was able to make a lovely quilt!

Sadly, though I composed the "hang tags" for all of these quilts for our just-completed Waco quilt show, I failed to save these documents.  So!  I will talk about my quilt, #6, and then I'll ask the other quilters to discuss their quilts in the comments!

When I saw Judy's quilt, what struck me were the three circles, the toucan bird, the lovely foliage, and the blue background.  So I wanted to include some living creature--and decided on a fish.  I used Susan Carlson's method to construct my fish separately, utilizing multiple gold and yellow fabrics cut in strips to form the fish.  My background was composed in a manner similar to Carlson's but was more accurately a "Sue Benner" method whereby, again, many small pieces and strips of fabric were placed on the backing, holding them down with fabric glue.  To further secure these strips, I topped them with tulle and quilted them down.  I added the seaweed and the air bubbles coming from the fish.  I had quilted HIM before I appliquéd him down onto the background, and I stitched around him many times with a zig zag stitch, another Sue Benner technique.

Okay, now let's have some fairly detailed comments from Carolyn, Tricia, Lois, Rita, Judy, Kathy, and finally Janet, and what inspired their quilts and what methods they used in constructing them!

See all of you on the blog on Friday of this week!

PS  Click to enlarge the composite!  You can see the quilts much better that way!