I LOVE a Challenge

Like most guilds, each year we are given a new challenge. Those who chose to participate were given some fabric and a just a few rules. Our guild is celebrating 30 years so our challenge was to work with the fabric given ( our guild colours Blue and Gold) along with any other fabric of our choosing. The rules were pretty simple. The challenge fabric HAD to be visible on the front of the piece and it also needed to have at least 1 dimension measuring 30 inches.
The fact that blue and gold is likely one of my least favourite colour combos made this even more of a challenge for me.
I generally use challenges as an opportunity to try something that I have not yet done. I used this as an opportunity to do a small whole cloth type quilt with a "faux"trapunto effect. It is titled Challenging the Rules, the 30" dimension is from corner to corner on the diagonal.
I started by creating a fairly simple design with our guild logo/block at the center. These bits were cut from the challenge fabric and fused to a plain piece of muslin.Next, I overlaid a piece of tone on tone white fabric on top, which as you can see quiets down those colours very effectively.
I used 2 layers of batting to create more drama to the areas that would not be stitched.
I began by stitching just around the motifs.Then it was a simple matter of experimenting with a variety of free motion quilt designs, again, I wanted to try some things I had not done before, such as the crosshatching and circles.
I learned a great deal working on this little quilt and really want to tackle something similar on a much larger scale. I learned that eyeballing straight lines is not a very good idea, I learned I could FMQ crosshatch using a ruler, I learned circles can have the illusion of round without being perfectly round and I also learned that it is rather difficult to properly photograph a white quilt.....I apologize for these photos (they are not the best)
I wondered if I would be disqualified because of my interpretation of the challenge fabrics being "visible" on the front. But apparently the voting members thought it was okay as this piece placed third among some really fabulous work. I am ALWAYS amazed at the wonderful, unique variety of work each challenge brings year after year.