Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Another Little Quilt Swap Round 5

KarrieLynne, of Freckled Whimsy, introduced me to Another Little Quilt Swap at one of our Stitch 'N' Bitch sessions.  She made a wonderful quilt for it, and got an equally wonderful quilt back.

A new round of ALQS is starting up, Round 5.  You can find the full rules here.  I'm personally attracted to ALQS because I'm pretty much guaranteed to get a quilt that I love.  

While I enjoy the process of producing a quilt for a swap, I often end up feeling like I put way too much effort into the product than I've sent out, particularly when I've gotten my squishie in the mail.  I'm not knocking anyone's talent - this is mostly my fault.  I keep under-estimating my level of expertise and willingness to try new techniques, and almost always list myself as an intermediate quilter.  This means that I send out quilts that take upwards of 40-60 hours, and get fairly simple quilts back. They're sweet and I appreciate the effort that went into them, but I always feel like I shouldn't have tried so hard...  Not to mention, they're almost always not my taste...  (The exception to this was my quilt from the Modify Tradition swap - far and away my favorite swap quilt.)

Well, anyway, ALQS promises to circumvent that disappointment.  If I manage to participate, I'll get to submit a list of my top 10 to 12 choices.  This means that I'll get something that I like, no matter what.  Also, this round will allow each participant to produce two quilts.

I'm excited!  Super excited!

Why?

This round of ALQS is limiting the size of the mini-quilts to that of a standard size sheet of paper in your country of origin.  I've never made a quilt that small, and I'm seriously tempted to challenge myself to two! I have ideas, and have begun searching for base images to work off of.  One idea is to take an extreme close-up of a flower, and abstract it.  The other idea is to paper piece a human figure.

I'm very sure about doing the close-up of a flower, but I'm not so sure about doing a portrait in fabric.  That's pretty intense, and I'm going to be stupid busy through the end of the year.  Admittedly, I'll have until January 31 to get something done, but...

Anyway, join in on the fun!

3 comments:

KarrieLyne said...

Woo Hoo!! The Enabler strikes again! Hee hee!

Glad you are playing along too! :)

Sarah Craig said...

I'm in too - and I'm so happy to say that I was the recipient of Karrie's wonderful ALQS4 quilt! It hangs on my sewing room wall, where I see it every day! I'm excited about the size limitation, too - it will definitely be a stretch, but then, so was the last ALQS quilt, as it was the first one I designed from scratch!

And Karrie is definitely an Enabler, with a capital E!!

Unknown said...

Hear, hear.
I often thought of taking part on this kind of SWAP but as a complete beginner always had to consider that my 'prospective' partner may be more experienced than me.
True, if one puts the skills, hours and effort into making something nice it is only fair that a partner should be on the same level!
You have a very informative and inspirational blog.
Thanks for sharing

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