What Am I Doing? - EQA Picture Swap Challenge

I was at a total loss as to what to write about just now. My mind was a blank – not unusual you might think and you wouldn’t be too far wrong. So, I thought, what am I doing right now? What am I working on? And it turns out that I’m actually doing quite a bit! So here is a little bit about what I’m up to, because apart from teaching my first ever classes online via Zoom, it turns out I’m actually sewing quite a lot too – an EQA challenge, a CTN challenge, an IPS challenge and even a QGI project, quite apart from my own projects. So today I'm going to talk about........

The EQA Picture Swap Challenge

I heard about the EQA (European Quilt Association) Picture Swap Challenge via the IPS International Representative back in October or November last year and interested parties have already had a couple of Zoom meetings to chat about it. It seemed like a fun and interesting opportunity.

So, to begin with each participant has each submitted a photograph, which has been halved; we must all attempt a response to the right hand side of our own photograph; we’ve all also been paired up with a fellow participant and we must attempt a response to the left hand side of their photograph. We can use any textile medium or technique that we choose but all pieces must finish at 40cm high by 20cm wide – not an easy ask for a quilter who usually works on a much larger scale and in inches. But after all, it is a Challenge!

I decided on a photograph of sweet peas taken in my garden last summer and I also decided to piece it. In silk. I know, what am I on? But I love to piece and I’ve done pixelated quilts before and I just thought the photo of the sweet peas would lend itself….and it does. I did have to fuse the silks with a light weight, iron on woven stabiliser to make them easier to work with, though. A further complication for me was working in centimetres. Each of the pixelated squares finishes at 2cm, so I had to cut each square at 3cm and set up a guide for a 1/2cm seam allowance. All of my rulers are in inches, of course. It was a bit of a fiddle but I think it's worked. 

So, now I'm ready to quilt the piece....simple edge to edge? In the ditch? Free motion text? Hmmmm..... this really is the FUN part!!

Photographs are only teasers because I don’t want to give the game away before the challenge is complete.

Next is my partner’s photograph….more of that anon.