Music Monday: Break Out!

Maybe it’s from growing up watching the Brady Bunch pull off a musical numbers in a half hour or watching the Monkees coming down the street every week, but I was so primed and ready for the early days of MTV. Music videos completely fascinate me, with their creative combination of music and a bit of “theatre.” I always think I am actually performing in one whenever I hear my favorites—however hard it really is to leap like Kevin Bacon in the warehouse scene from Footloose while you’re driving. I may or may not have thought about it.

Anyway, I do find that music videos provide a lot of inspiration in my quilting life. Sometimes a line from the song becomes the basis of a quilt; sometimes the colors or concepts in the visual portion move me to create something. Other times it may just be the music itself that causes me to imagine something new. I suggested to the Gen Q staff that we should have a Music Monday challenge where we present a video, and then have the readers show us what it inspired them to create. They loved the idea. Guess who got the job of hunting down the video?

So I started my journey on YouTube looking for the perfect video. There are a TON of cool music videos out there. I am sure I can provide Music Mondays for the next 156 years.  But I was searching for just the right one to launch our Gen Q Music Mondays.

After hours of laborious research (try convincing your spouse that trolling the internet for music videos is “work”), I found this video by Swing Out Sister that totally matched our Generation Q vibe.

Breakout is perfect for our first Music Monday. When I saw the sewing machine in the first 3 seconds of the video, I knew I had found the Golden Video!! The theme of the song also matched our new venture at Generation Q and modern quilting in general. So yeah, a 20-year-old song is new again.

So now that you have watched it, here is your task: Create something inspired by this video. What caught your attention? Is it the colors? The theme of the song? Some detail that you noticed in the foreground or background? There are multiple directions you can go with such a challenge.  How does this relate to your world? Are you breaking out of some mold or area where you felt trapped in? Make something that speaks to that situation.  Of course the coolest thing you could make would be the black and yellow striped outfit Corrine is wearing, but that’s just my idea (and no, I would never make that. I look terrible in horizontal stripes). For a little extra inspiration, though, I made these to help you kick off your own ideas:

Remember, inspiration is simply a stepping stone.  What you create doesn’t have to obviously be directly related to the video.  Do you like that shade of green with the black and white images? Make a bag with those colors from your stash.  One of the guys is sitting on a swing during part of the song.  Make a block loosely based on that.  Telephone block?  Rolls of fabric? There is a corner flower shop in part of this video… you get the idea.

So make up something inspired by our first Music Monday video and post your picture on our Music Monday Flickr page here. We will have our crack team of  Guest Judges vote on their favorites and then share winners with you back here at GenQ.

Go ahead…break out!

POST SCRIPT:

Okay, so we’re obviously just coming off of the first holiday ‘cuz we forgot some things here. we’d like to see blocks, of any size, made up. You’d post the pics on the Flickr link that Scott put up above. The block images are due by 9 p.m. EST on Monday, Dec. 19. Then, our friends at Fat Quarterly Magazine will judge your entries. We’ll announce the winners on Dec. 30. Winners will receive some awesome assortment of fabrics/tools/books and we’ll pick three place finishers. If you want to work up your block in a project (we’re always doing double duty for Xmas here), that’s fine as long as the block is clearly visible. And the block needs to reflect the theme of the song/video. Anymore questions? Just holler!