Challenge Quilt.

A year ago, three of us, decided to try a "Round Robin Quilt" the idea being that we'd each make a small starter piece measuring one hundred square inches and send it to person two who would then add the same amount again and pass it on for the final amount to be added before the quilt top was dispatched back to the originator.

With the news full of the wet weather and floods, I decided to create an abstraction called "Levels".

I dispatched this, along with a small selection of the fabrics used and awaited a package for me to work on next! It's not easy deciding how to add to someone else's work and it was definately good to have some of their fabrics. This made for a more homogeneous finished result.

Easter came and we each eagerly awaited the return of "our" quilt.

I confess that it then sat at the end of a long queue of work while I made pieces for Festival and for exhibition. It was June before I got round to making a start.

Foolishly I didn't think about photographing the piece until after I had made the first decision about how to treat the piece. I had already added a border with curved edges!

I decided that I would set the piece in a larger border of a more neutral muddy field colour and create a tiny pieced strip of the inner quilt's fabrics inset within the bottom and left hand borders.

I sandwiched the quilt and then set it aside for several months while I worried about how I would deal with the different areas and fought some personal demons. Come November, feeling more creative, I started to think about what was visible above the water levels in January. This became the rationale for the stitching I did by hand. The spare vegetation that poked it's head out of the muddy water was suggested by more spiky stitches. In the area of the two pieces of beige silk I decided to show the stark trees and the myriad of water birds that now called the area home.

I know how hard it is to make a round robin quilt have a homogeneous feel and am quite pleased with how well the whole reflects what was in my mind at the start.

Here is the finished piece. I'm glad I've finished it, relieved that I have managed to hold on the original concept and sufficiently pleased with the piece to want to keep it!