5 Day Quilt Challenge - Professional & Student Work

After seeing Leilani Pierson's February/March 2010 article in Quilting Arts Magazine titled "A 5-Day Quilt Challenge, Creating Art on A Whim", I knew I wanted to try out this project with my Advanced 3-d students.  I contacted Leilani and actually bought her piece (above & below) so that I could have an amazing example to share with my students.  I also purchased another gorgeous piece by fiber artist Melissa Cornish which I will be showcasing tomorrow. 

I also got in contact with a fiber artist who participated in the challenge and had her piece published alongside Leilani's, Wanda Stivison (above and below).  I adore both Wanda and Leilani's work, the attention to detail is truly amazing.

On more challenging projects such as this I always like to try them out first, either myself over the summer or one of my 4th year very advanced students.  So I gave this challenge to senior Ashley Morris 2 years ago to see what she could do with it and off she went.

Above and below are Day 1 and Day 2, first applying color to the fabric piece, then quilting the colored fabric to felt or batting.  Unfortunately this is as far as Ashley got because she accidentally lost her work.

So skip to this last year where I presented the assignment to my 3rd year Advanced 3-D girls.  The photo above represents day 3 where you cut your quilt piece into at least 6 separate pieces.  Above we have senior Angeline Tran's work and below is senior Olivia Hill.  You can see how Angeline made mostly diagonal cuts whereas Olivia cut curves and diagonals.  And then Olivia shows Day 4 where you sew the cut pieces back up again is a different configuration, and then begin adding lots of hand and machine embellishments.

This is Day 5 and Angeline's finished work.  On Day 5 you fold, bend, tuck, and mold the piece into a 3-d vessel.  The coolest part was that I never showed the girls the entire finished pieces, only little parts of them at a time, so they really didn't know where I was taking them till day 5.  What a fun adventure it was.  Definitely worth repeating this year.

Here is Olivia's finished piece, check out all her fine details.

And lastly we have senior Breeana Johng's vessel.  So delicate and beautiful, just like Breeana.

EXTRA CREDIT: on a multi colored piece of paper (yes you can make the paper multi colored by using crayons, markers, collage and such) cut out an asymmetrical geometric or organic shape.  Yes, it must be asymmetrical!  Then fold, tuck, wrap, bend and mold the piece of paper into a 3-d vessel like the girls did above.  When you have a pleasing form glue, or stitch (or however you can think of) to hold the vessel's  form.  The most creative, interesting solution will win 5 extra credit points.  For participating you will earn 2 extra credit points.  You have until Monday at the beginning of class to turn this in.  Have fun!