We had a great social meeting last night at Carolyn's house. Thank you, Carolyn, for hosting!
At the meeting, we reviewed and finalized the guidelines for the Modern Traveling Quilt challenge we are hosting. This post will outline the details for the round robin and, I hope, entice you to participate! Here goes nothing....
What is the traveling quilt challenge?
For this traveling quilt challenge, you will provide a starter block of your choice. Each month, your block will travel to another participant, who will add to your top in some fashion. At each meeting, those who participated will show the guild membership what they added and share a little about their process for deciding what to add. Then, the work in progress will then travel to the next person. At the end, when your quilt top has finished its travels, you will receive your block back, but now it will be an evolved quilt top! How fun is that?!
The Details:
- Bring "starter materials" to our April meeting. This will be how you "sign up" for the swap. Your starter materials should include:
- A block of some sort. This will be how you "sign up" for the challenge. Any block, any size, any shape, any color. It's up to you.
- Some "starter fabrics" that other guild members can incorporate into your quilt top if they so choose.
- A small notebook of some type. At the front, provide any information you wish those adding to your quilt to know. For example, you could give guidance on color scheme, overall feel of the quilt you are looking for, a general direction/theme of your quilt. Try not to get too specific...allow for freedom and creativity in your guild mates. Examples might be: I'd like this to be a Christmas quilt. I'd like this to be a red/white/and blue quilt. I'd love a medallion quilt. I don't want a medallion quilt. I don't like brown, so please don't include any brown fabric. Get the idea? (This notebook can also be used by participants to write notes about what they added and why.)
- A label that folks who work on your quilt can sign. That way, you'll have a nice record for the back of the quilt!
- A container for transporting the project in.
- At the April meeting, Pam will collect the boxes and start the rotation. (She will have a list and track the rotation of boxes.) You'll go home with someone else's box to work on for the next month.
- If you choose to participate, you are committing to get the box back by the next guild meeting. If you are going to be out of town, just get it to someone to bring to the meeting for you. Or mail it. But please make sure you save enough time for mailing!
- When you receive someone else's box, get creative! Look at what's going on with the quilt and add something to it. You could make another block of a different sort to add to it. You could add a row of flying geese. Get creative!
- There are no size requirements (unless the owner of original block gave some specifications in his/her instructions).
- We'll do a check in around October to see how long people want to go. We think we'll possibly stop at the November meeting or the Christmas party, unless folks want to go longer.
- The owner of the original block will be the owner of the quilt top at that stage.
Remember: Do good work. Don't stress. Have fun! The owner of the quilt will love it because you worked on it!
Here are some examples--below. (I found these by typing #roundrobinquilt in Instagram. You can find more ideas and inspiration there and on Pinterest if you want!)
We started a Pinterest board for Round Robin Quilts as well. Please contribute to it if you'd like!
I am so excited about the possibilities on this. I hope you will all play along!
Yours,
Stephanie
