Back in March an idea was floated within the UKQU bloggers community to put together a ‘sew-a-row’ quilt. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it is a quilt made up of different horizontal rows, usually with some kind if sashing and a border. This was a collaborative project between Sue Griffiths, myself, Corinne Curtis, Sharon Reid and Helen Kent, although we had a great deal of input from Sylvia Priest and Juliet Nice along the way too – so credit for this project must go to everyone involved.
Being a collaborative project, we had some periods of quite lively debate before we really got underway. We quite quickly came up with a common size for each row, 9“ x 36” finished, with the agreement that the finished size could be made up of any components we wanted, for example one long wide row or four blocks.
Our group had pretty much settled on the theme of houses when the alternative subject of ICE came onto the scene and some of us had to re-think our initial approach. We were also provided with a colour palette of cool blues to work from as the other ‘sew-a-row’ group were working with warm colours and the theme of FIRE.
I’ve got to be honest, the theme of ICE really didn’t set me on fire at first (did you see what I did then?). I had already sketched out some quirky, colourful house-based foundation paper pieced designs and I struggled to drum up any enthusiasm to start over when the theme change and icy colour palette was put to us. However, I was very lucky that the incredibly talented Sue Griffiths was doing the first row design. Sue stuck with the initial idea of little houses and came up with a gorgeous row featuring landmark buildings in Dunedin, NZ.
I was motivated by Sue’s row and sketched out a few different plans. The best idea I came up with for an ICE themed row was Arctic and Antarctic animals. I took inspiration from the colours Sue had used and decided to make a pair of versatile rows that could either be used as two 4½” (finished) filler rows or sewn together and used as a single 9” (finished) row. You can find the free pattern right here in the ICE BOM section.
Time was quite tight for five different people based in different parts of the world to get this quilt designed and made, so while I was working on my design, I posted Sue’s row off so that the next person in line could get started. Our methodical approach has worked really well and Helen, who was finishing the quilt off had everything she needed in good time.
This has been a really challenging exercise in teamwork and I have learned a lot about working with different personalities – especially in regards to bouncing ideas around and getting feedback from my peers. Whilst this has been a rewarding experience, I am enjoying my current and ongoing solo projects, safe in in the knowledge that I have a great team of talented people behind me at UKQU.
Responses