Fast Friday Fabric Challenge

I belong to an art quilt group inspired by Project Runway. Someone got the notion two years ago on the Quiltart list to have a group with a monthly challenge. The resulting art quilt is, ideally, finished within one week and published on our Yahoo group and/or on our blog for critique. This group has been a wonderful learning tool for many of us. Since the group is getting ready to start its third year and has 25 new members I want to show some of my work during the past two years.

The very first challenge in September 2006 was to use fall colors and to attempt to show depth. My husband and I had just traveled to Alton, IL and one of our stops was a beautiful old cemetery. My first quilt was inspired by a picture I took and is called Final Fall. Those odd little beads are supposed to be headstones. This quilt is 9" x 12" since we originally had a goal of making journal size works.

The second challenge was to use the poem "Jabberwocky" for inspiration and to add texture. My little work is called "Jabberwocky and the Lost Green Pigs". Those odd little beads showed up again in this piece and are representing the lost green pigs. Anyway, that was the plan....

The next challenge was to make a quilt with a non-traditional or odd shape. I had just figured out a technique I call fractured quilts so I made one and added a thread-painted lizard that hadn't found a home. I'm happy to say I didn't add any of the green beads.

This November challenge was to be inspired by the first line of a book and to use value and contrast. I am a Dickens fan and pulled out Little Dorrit and used its first line: "Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun one day." I was in the middle of taking a Quilt University course on painting on fabric so decided to attempt to do this challenge in fabric paints. My piece was inspired by a painting of the Bay of Marseilles by Cezanne. For some reason, his work looks better than mine.

The next challenge was to create a still life, crop it and add form using the illusion of dimension. My Breakfast Table Still Life was inspired by this picture of what was sitting on my dining table.

After cropping the photo I made this:

I thought it would be fun to take the same elements and put them together in an abstract way so this is what the back of the quilt looks like: