Over a year ago I talked my quilting buddies into a special type of round robin that I had come across on-line. I would love to give credit where credit is due but all I know it was from a group of women somewhere in BC and because the pictures are no longer on-line I can’t even source it out anymore.
Basically, it is done as a regular round robin but instead of simply adding borders to the project that you receive, you have to follow ‘instructions’ as to what is to be done for that round – things like ” make the project neither square nor rectangular” and “cut and insert fabric 3 times”.
Sounded like a lot of fun and a great way to maybe get out of the quilting box we had put ourselves into. I bravely (and rather naively as it turned out) offered to make up the spreadsheet for the 9 of us to follow so we would always know what instructions we were to follow and who to send the project off to when we were done. Sounds pretty basic right? Wrong.
This ‘challenge’ was going to take over a year to complete. We wanted to make sure we all had enough time to do the challenge. We all agreed our starting blocks would be something simple (mine was just a fat quarter of fabric) and not a block that we had spent hours making! After handing out my rather spiffy looking spreadsheets to everyone my friend said “I don’t think this will work out right”. I managed to argue loud enough that I was sure it was OK and it was left at that point. Well, of course a couple months into it we realized that it wasn’t right. We needed another set of instructions added to the list. A few months later the call went out that the spreadsheet still wasn’t right because all of a sudden everyone was getting back a project that they had already worked on. No problem, we decided, we would just carry on. Lo and behold awhile later it was discovered that the spreadsheet was really messed up because the owners of the project would be getting their own back before it was even finished. That really had to get fixed so I spent a long afternoon re-working the entire thing and got it straightened out enough that we could complete it. What a nightmare!! And, that is what I’ve called my finished project.
WHAT A NIGHTMARE
Here is my finished top. You can see the different instructions – cut 3 times – add piping – make in neither square nor rectangular and so on.
The vibrating blue in the centre was the fat quarter that I started out with.
Not really my cup of tea! I was bound and determined I was going to quilt it though, it means a lot to me that we all had a part in it.
I started out by printing out a couple of pictures of the quilt in greyscale and started to doodle. It finally dawned on me that if it is called What a Nightmare why not turn it into a nightmare!
I must explain that I am terrified of spiders. Totally. So – if this top was going to be my nightmare then I guess I had to include a few. The fat quarter in the centre really does lend itself to a spider web after all.
What a wicked web we weave
I used Superior Metallics in Silver for the web and King Tut Ebony for the spiders and bugs. It was all done free hand and I went around the bugs and spiders 2 or 3 times each to give them definition and twice on the web.
AGGHHHH!
What else should be in the quilt but my version of Munch’s “Scream” I used King Tut Limestone for the outline and So Fine! Rose Petal for the background fill around him…her…it. I really wanted the piece to be kind of wonky and weird so all I did was sketch a rough outline of what I wanted and just played with the machine.
I even put Kilroy ( for those that remember him) in the upper right corner.
Kilroy was here
Fingers are hanging down all around the outside pink border, Red Metallics bats in the Flying Geese blocks and slithery snakes in the Drunkards path.
Slithery
All in all I had a lot of fun. Except maybe for the spiders.
behind the scenes
It was a great chance to practice my background fills too!
Thank you to all my 4Qx2+1 quilting buddies – the spiders will only be coming out at Halloween!
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