Did you ever play the telephone game in grade school? One person whispers a phrase into a second person's ear and that person whispers what they heard to a third person and so on and so forth. Often what the last person hears is very different from what the first person said. Our
Telephone Quilt Challenge is much like this game. My friend Sylvia started this challenge January, 2010, by recruiting 6 other quilt artists. Sylvia took a photograph and shared it with
Anne, who made a quilt inspired by the photo. Anne then shared her quilt with Helen, who made a quilt inspired by Anne's quilt, and so on and so forth. No one but Anne and Sylvia saw the original photo until yesterday. Yesterday was the big reveal party where we enjoyed food, friendship and beautiful art quilt pieces.
Sylvia's original photo is of some interesting sculpture in Chichester, England:
Which inspired Anne's quilt:
It's easy to see the cyclist in Anne's quilt when you've seen the original photo but Helen saw a face so she put a face in her quilt and included the arrows for good measure:
Brandy wasn't sure what to make of Helen's quilt but the arrows and funny face made her think about directions and not knowing which way to go which inspired her to make a map:
This photo makes it difficult to see the roads that are quilted to each of the clever places Brandy created. She also made a wonky compass and included the funny face into the lower right hand corner of her quilt. She passed her quilt on to Kaye who thought a lot about maps and for some reason the image of Tinkerbell holding a map of Never Never Land came to mind. She doesn't like Tinkerbell but decided to make a fairy and added embellishments with inspiring words on them and included the north star in the background.
Kaye passed her quilt on to me and I was so struck by it's beauty that I told everyone I don't ever want to follow Kaye again! haha I put her quilt up on my design wall for a few weeks and tried to decide what inspiration I should take from it. For some reason the fairy's wings stood out to me and made me think of butterflies. It wasn't until after I started my quilt that I noticed a butterfly in the fairy's hands!
My quilt was passed on to Lisa B, the last participant, who pondered and thought about Monarch butterflies. Monarch butterflies migrate south to Mexico and then in the spring they fly north and visit the Pacific Grove area in California. This made her think about her favorite place in Pacific Grove:
AsilomarThere are butterflies quilted into the background and then photos of the beach and Asilomar where many in our group have gone to Empty Spools quilt seminars. And that my dear readers is how one gets from a sculpture in England to a beach in California!
