Quilt blocks
Aug. 20th, 2013 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
My quilt group has been doing a Round Robin. We each picked out own theme and will end up with a quilt that all the participants contributed one or more squares to. I didn't realize how many different definitions of "theme" there might be. Some chose a fabric theme, like 30s prints or juvenile, in any scrappy design for a sampler. Some chose a focus fabric to match, again in a sampler. I chose a season, to offer the option of color or fabric print or picture pattern. someone else chose an animal and a color, to allow either for maximum flexibility. Someone picked a pattern that everyone was to follow in any fabric.
What followed was almost as much re-interpretation as the starting theme. The animal/color theme is resulting in a batik sub-theme that wasn't even suggested, to good but unexpected effect. The 30s prints, perhaps the first that necessitated buying a bit of fabric, has prevailed in several of the packages that allowed any fabric. The samplers have followed a sub-theme of simple or complex, fully symmetric or wide variety according to what the first couple of participants chose to do.
The results have been great: fairly cohesive groups of squares, lessons in fabric types, color-matching, pattern research, a new curious-trick pattern, subtle colors and bright colors and ideas for our own quilts. All skill levels were allowed and encouraged, and most allowed a range of techniques including applique, paper-piecing, traditional patterns, simple patterns, without requiring anything in particular.
What kind of quilt-of-the-month or other exchanges do you do? How do they work?
What followed was almost as much re-interpretation as the starting theme. The animal/color theme is resulting in a batik sub-theme that wasn't even suggested, to good but unexpected effect. The 30s prints, perhaps the first that necessitated buying a bit of fabric, has prevailed in several of the packages that allowed any fabric. The samplers have followed a sub-theme of simple or complex, fully symmetric or wide variety according to what the first couple of participants chose to do.
The results have been great: fairly cohesive groups of squares, lessons in fabric types, color-matching, pattern research, a new curious-trick pattern, subtle colors and bright colors and ideas for our own quilts. All skill levels were allowed and encouraged, and most allowed a range of techniques including applique, paper-piecing, traditional patterns, simple patterns, without requiring anything in particular.
What kind of quilt-of-the-month or other exchanges do you do? How do they work?