There is an internet culture of quilters who participate in challenges. Anyone can host, rules are determined, and we go for it. I just completed the Fractured Quilt Challenge, where we each got a photograph of a pink daisy (photo on bottom). It was separated into 4 uneven segments and we each replicated the segments in fabric. We sent them back to the moderator who "shuffled the deck" and sent 4 quadrants (made by 4 different people) to the participants. I did my quadrants in applique, then beaded and even added crystals. But I was very disappointed in what I received in return. One quandrant, especially, looked like a total afterthought and that the maker just slammed it together. The centers were way off and the colors clashed. I tried transparent fabric paint to dull some of the colors, but as it was, there was no way I would finish it as it was. So after a few weeks of really looking at it and listening to it, I decided to cut it up. After all, there were no restrictions on how to finish it, we only agreed to finish it.
The result is There's No Place Like Om, a lotus floating in a starry night. I looked at some of lotus images on line and drew a fairly symmetric lotus and appliqued the petals (cut from the pieces I had received) with a variety of rayon threads. The OM is also appliqued on the top. Due to the variation of fabrics used by the challenge participants, some kind of shrunk with the heat of the steam iron, but I like the puckering that resulted). The sky is bobbin quilted with blue metallic and the base with variegated green rayon. And the funny thing that happened on the way to finishing it: I had originally intended for the blue to be the bottom, but I placed the OM upside down.... so now the foreground is the background, and a lotus at night is a lovely thing to behold.
