Getting to Work! Design Challenge Survey

We're six weeks into the challenge and it's time to get to work on a quilt!  Please vote, on this survey on your choice of six designs.  The designs are on the survey form, but I've also included them below.   Thanks for your input!

Boxed Cereal

Rain, Rain Go Away

Friends, Far and Near

Company's Coming!

Different Paths

Lonesome Whistle

Design Challenge #6 Results

This week Ann presented the challenge around the theme of "Different Paths."   Ann is a fellow quilter, but also an avid gardener so I suspect that she intended it to be paths in a garden or in nature.  I broadened the idea, though I included some that are organic.

The first idea uses stepping stones of various sizes and shapes. (You should be proud of me--no circles!)  The paths wind in and out, and I thought that I could do some sort of transparency effect where they intersect.  I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.

The next idea was a much more structured and regular, with paths working their way around walls.  Originally I thought about doing the walls as a sort of maze, and I suppose these are a very simple, stylized sort of maze.  Of course, there always has to be a smart-aleck that cuts through the maze instead of following the rules.   I don't know anyone like that, though.

In the shower yesterday the idea of bands of color pieced next to other, with paths running across them popped into my head.  At that point I thought I wanted some bright, modern prints for the bands but as I started putting it on "paper" it felt more like a landscape of fields and when I opted for curved lines instead of straight, it began to look like a stylized Iowa landscape.  My subconscious must have registered that because, without even having that in mind, I put in two blue curved lines.  "Iowa" means "land between two rivers."  Voila.

Then I tried the crazy, chaotic curved lines again.  Ugh.  I keep thinking that someday that will look right to me but, apparently, not yet.

So, on to straight lines.   I started paths of different colors, that diverged at the end.  It looks a lot like the Amtrak symbol, doesn't it?   I like overlaying them, however, and I might do a transparency thing here, too, where they overlap.

While I like the Amtrak symbol, it's Amtrak's symbol.   I experimented with the forked path shape rotated around and stacked on each other.  I think I like it.   John thinks it could be "woven" where the paths overlap and I think that's a good possibility.  (He also thinks I could make this into a block that is repeated, with the lines meeting/intersecting when the blocks are put together.  It's an interesting idea, and I might play with that another day, in EQ.)

What if the paths had curves, instead of all straight lines?  Again, rotating the same path in several different directions made for a pleasing sort of pattern.  A transparency or woven effect could come into play here, too.

When I first thought of the concept, in my mind the curves were wrapping around each other, which necessitated some more fiddling.

 In the end I decided it needed a straight line, to better balance it.  Actually, I thought perhaps two or three but I was satisfied after one, and more than that would make it too cluttered.

Which one do you like best?  Later this week I hope to post a survey, asking which of my choices from each of the 6 weeks (so far) everyone would like to see me work on first.   That means I have to choose my favorite from each of the 6 weeks.  I like several this time, so help me out and share your favorite.   :-)

Design Challenge Week #6

This week's challenge topic comes from my quilting friend, Ann.  She suggested "Different Paths," and that works for me!   Some ideas are churning around in my mind--we'll see what come out.  In the meantime, think about (and sketch) your own ideas for "different paths."

See you back here soon for my own ideas and, hopefully, yours as well.

Design Challenge; Week #5 Results

This week's challenge was to design a quilt that illustrates company coming to visit, in honor of an upcoming visit from a friend whom I don't get to see very often.

I skipped the sketch book this week, and went straight to Word to "sketch."  Several ideas emerged, and some are more promising than others, as always.  More might come to mind in the future, but here's what has come forth so far.

The first is more a statement about my housekeeping skills that about the company, but it is honest that my house tends be a bit...shall we say, not quite kempt, unless company is coming, at which point I straighten things up and make them more orderly.  Not perfectly orderly, because I couldn't be a perfect, or even really good, housekeeper no matter how hard I try.  Then, when the company leaves, the house adjusts to its normal state of pleasant disarray.

That is kind of fun and might make a quilt that is not half bad, at least in its meaning to me.  The next idea has the company coming into the house, mingling and conversing, then leaving again at the end of the stay.   They are each a little different, some know each other and others do not.  .  It is more of a party sort of atmosphere and the design is appropriately busy.  In fact, it may be a bit chaotic.  :-)

So, more in the spirit of one friend coming to visit for a few days, the design is modified.  The spiral in the house represents the fun and joy of friends visiting and talking.   I like this one very much, though I think I might make some changes in color scheme.

I gave some thought to using flowers to represent the flowering of friendship, using petals joining in the home to flower.

I didn't like that very much and switched to my every-favorite circles to represent the friends as they come into flower.  I like this better but I think if I were to make a quilt it would be more traditional, with a pieced pattern of solid or prints that read solid, on either side of the "house," which would be a large floral fabric that included all the colors of the solid pieces. 

I know which is my favorite; which one do you like best?  How might you change any of the designs?

One more week of the challenge, I think, and then I'll take a survey to see which of the six you think I should work on first, to make an actual quilt.  (The challenge will probably continue but I'd like to make a start on some of these designs this summer.)

Design Challenge, Week #5

This week my sister, Mary Kay, contributed the challenge.  A dear friend is coming to visit this weekend, and Mary Kay suggested a quilt about having company in your home.   It's an intriguing and appropriate challenge for this week; we'll see what it might bring!

If you have an idea that you'd like to contribute to the challenge, please add it in the comments.  I don't have a time frame for the challenge and it could go on for some time. (I do have an admittedly vague time frame for when I will start the actual quilt-making, but I will do a survey  as to which design should be the first to be made.)

Design Challenge Week #4 Results

It's been a busy week but an idea or two have been percolating in my head for a few days.  Two general concepts kept coming to the fore.  While I like both concepts, I seem to have a preference for one of them.

The sketchbook has sketchy ideas laid out.

 

I'm a beginning weaver who has wanted to weave for all of her life, so I wanted to like the woven ideas more.  I started with the idea of the threads weaving back and forth. (In a quilt the "threads" would be woven rather than sitting on top of each other).  Friendships sometimes wax and wane, moving away then coming back.  Different colors would represent different friendships and, in a quilt, the threads would likely be different widths.  But I didn't like it.  I didn't like it at all.  (Perhaps I would like it more with the varied thread thicknesses, and having them woven in and out but I doubt it would help much.)

I tried it with a more traditional straight threads in a weaving idea.  I actually like this one a great deal and it might find its way, in some form, into a quilt.   But it didn't really fit what was floating around in my head.

So, back to more fluid lines.  Again, varied widths and colors, along with proper interweaving, would improve the design and make it better fit the concept.  I like it, sort of, and it, too, might make it into a quilt one day.  But not this one.  :-)

The other idea, which I didn't want to like as much as the woven concept, uses different shapes and colors to represent different types of friendships and friends.  (Yes, there are bars and circles.  I can't help it!)  Some are heavily connected for a long time, some touch our lives for a very short time.  Some loom large in our lives, others are brief and limited but still a part of who we are, and important to our lives.

At first the idea involved only rectangular shapes, as illustrated in the sketch, but my brain liked different shapes.  Because some friendships are more intense than others, some shapes would have more intense colors. 

In order to represent friendships that wane or are "dormant" for a time, but are still connected to us, I decided to add some threads of connection.   As I'm a spinner (er, Spinster) I could use some handspun yarn.   And I would probably have to add some beads for embellishment, just because.

No doubt the end quilt would look different than this, with shapes moved, resized, and recolored. I might even use fewer shapes, so it's closer to the previous image.  But I like the concept. 

How about you?  What would you add or change, to represent your friendships?

Design Challenge, Week #4

This week I had not idea what I was going to pose for a challenge.  I had had something in mind but all the design ideas that sprang to mind had bars and circles and, while not a big surprise, I wanted something that might spark some different ideas.  I like bars and circles, mind you, and I don't mind have some of those designs in the hopper but this week let's go for something else.

And it came to me this morning, as I was remembering a lovely visit yesterday with some old friends that I hadn't seen in quite awhile.    This week the design will be about friendships, how they weave in and out, with friends near and far, always in touch or touching our lives now and then.

I think this one may take a little longer--friendship is a rich and complex idea.  I don't know if I can begin to do it justice but that's what a challenge is all about.

Happy designing; I'll see you back here later this week with some of your ideas--and I hope you'll share yours, too!