Creative Quilt Challenges – Take the Challenge to Discover Your Style & Improve Your Design Skills C&T Publishing – $29.95 hardcopy; $20.99 ebook Pat Pease and Wendy Hill
If this blog post were a fb shout out it’d start with, “Heads up Q-bies, here’s That! book to add to your book stash!” Here are two quilters, with different styles, whose quilts will inspire you to give the quilts of your dreams a try, see what you can do.
This is the kind of book that gives that peek behind the heavy drapery (thinly veiled curtain) of Wendy and Pat’s sewing room, into their creative process to create quilts that reflect their personal style. In reading what they do, in seeing how different their quilts are, you’ll see how making the quilts your own, using the colors you love, the threads, and textures you love will help develop Your personal style.
Wendy shares, “In 2008, when we created our first challenge together, we had no idea how the idea of challenge quilts would unfold in our future. The creative process is like a rollercoaster ride, with twists, turns, and surprises. The ride comes to an end, but new rides are always starting: Let’s get started on those new challenge ideas!”
Echino yet Again, Pat Pease photo courtesy C&T
With each quilt challenge Pat and Wendy invite us to “Make it Your own” and yes, do that. Use the unusual fabrics left over from every prom dress, Christening gown, tutu, skirt, pants you’ve ever made. With the tips in the chapter Unlikely Materials you’re almost ready to get started stitching. These challenges and quilts are a great way to use those fabrics in your stash that have left your mind going, “what on earth was I thinking?” and “how soon til the guild has the annual ugly fabric exchange?” more importantly leave you knowing, that each experiment, each challenge leads to some really good information.
Confluence, Wendy Hill photo courtesy C&T Publishing
Listening to how Wendy speaks of color as multi-level houses provides us with a slightly new way of being neighborly with color. We don’t have to like that neighbor to let it play in our quilts, giving them a bit more character, interest and intrigue.
Color Blinded Again (side 2 of ColorBlind) Wendy Hill photo courtesy C&T Publishing
In the end Pat and Wendy hand the quilterly challenge back to us. It’s our turn to create a challenge. It’s our turn to look at our stashes and/or the fabric shop to take a fabric, thread, batting, color, design and begin the art of creating something cool. One of those quilts that live just on the periphery, the one that whispers sweet nothings in our ears, you know the one…
Oh! and don’t forget to check out the other blogs on the tour:
Monday, March 28: ctpub.com/blog
Tuesday, March 29: Maria Shell
Wednesday, March 30: Sandra Clemons
Thursday, March 31: Tierney Hogan
Friday, April 1:Gina at BOLT Fabric Boutique
Monday, April 4: Yvonne Fuchs
Tuesday, April 5: Kristin Shields
Wednesday, April 6: Paula Mariedaughter
Thursday, April 7: Generation Q Magazine
Friday, April 8: Wendy Hill and Pat Pease
And of course we have an opportunity to win a copy of the book (hard copy US/digital international). What’s the one thing in your sewing room you can’t live with. We’ll draw a winner Saturday April 16th.
COMMENT #1
Just one thing? My 6 x12 inch straight ruler ruler. But I also need a rotary cutter, a seam ripper, and more.
COMMENT #2
The one thing in my sewing room that I can’t live with….is an unused quilting frame that a friend gave to me that a church group was just going to throw in the garbage. I was so thrilled to receive it and really thought that it would be used. Yet, in reality, my home is just not big enough and there is no where to set it up. So, it is going to be put into a garage sale next month and I hope that the person who gets it does get to use it and enjoy it for many years! Thank you for sharing and have a fantastic creative day!
COMMENT #3
I can’t live without my Brother sewing machine! I would love to have better lighting!
COMMENT #4
Ha! I can’t live with the fact that I currently run my “sewing room” out of my bedroom! We are out of space! I can’t live without my upcycle stash. I love using anything and everything cool I can get my hands on from thrift stores and flea markets in my sewing!
COMMENT #5
I may have to revisit the scrap bag I have from garment making in the 90’s.
COMMENT #6
Hmmmm…something I can’t live with….would be pins on the floor (my foot always seems to find them!) but something I can’t live without is my magnet on an extending stick for picking them up! 🙂
COMMENT #7
“What’s the one thing in your sewing room you can’t live with.” or did you really mean to ask “… without”???
I’m not really sure which question you mean to ask, but I’m going to try to answer it… Being one of those OCD types, I am really uncomfortable with any disorganization, but being a sewist/quilter, piles of fabric and half-used packets of notions seem to grow over night. So my answer to your question is… bins!
Bins of all sizes help me feel somewhat organized. I can hide the piles and feel like everything is somewhat controlled. I can focus.
And then there’s the issue of bins taking up space in my sewing room. Why can’t I have the sewing room in the pictures? …the one without bins. …the one with everything out of sight and the vase of flowers on the closed sewing machine cabinet?
But what would be the fun in that?
COMMENT #8
Just one thing? Oh my goodness, decisions, decisions. I’ll skip over the obvious choices and say my wooden wallpaper seam roller that I use for “finger pressing” and flattening seams. Love it!
COMMENT #9
I don’t like non-quilting things in my quilt studio. If you meant what I can’t live without…that would be my Innova LA!
COMMENT #10
I would have a hard time giving up my rotary cutter. When I first started quilting, they didn’t exist. What a wonderful invention!
COMMENT #11
The one thing that I can’t live with in my sewing room, is when it gets too disorganized. It is so hard to keep it organized b/c there are always more and more ideas to try out, and then I keep pulling more and more fabrics and books out for inspiration. It’s a vicious cycle. It is pretty much impossible to pick ONE thing that I can’t live without. Everything that has to do with quilting is pretty much an “I can’t so without” item.
COMMENT #12
My rotary cutter but that seam ripper is a close second.
COMMENT #13
Is this a trick question? The one thing in my sewing room that I can’t live with but can’t seem to fix is the lighting. It’s terrible, and I complain about it constantly, and yet it remains the same: horrible! In case the question is really meant to be, “…can’t live without”, I’ll say, my big hamper of scraps. Everything else could be replaced with something similar, but those are irreplaceable, because they hold memories of other projects, or were handed down from other sewists.
COMMENT #14
can’t live without – my ott light. Can’t live with – I made a design board out of a piece of insulation covered with batting, but it’s not really big enough for bed-sized quilts, and I don’t really have a place to store it. I think it has to go! (I usually end up doing layouts on my floor! lol!)
COMMENT #15
As a newbie sewer I would have to say me seam ripper !
COMMENT #16
My sewing machine!!!
COMMENT #17
I can’t live without my sewing machine. Oh my, gotta have one of those 24/7. thanks for the chance to own a glorious modern looking new book
COMMENT #18
I second the rotary cutter!
COMMENT #19
One thing I can’t live WITH in my sewing room is clutter and un-organization. It drives me nuts and sucks the creative energy out of me!
One thing I can’t live WITHOUT in my sewing room is my large window that my sewing machine sits in front of. I love to sit there on sunny mornings to welcome the day and remind me how lucky I am to have a room of my own for sewing!