First Place Distraction by Kathy Hammond
Artist statement: This little quilt was a blessing. During a time of worry I could go into a zone of "what's next", "what will I try that could be fun"? I forgot for a short time that my husband could become very ill if he caught Covid-19, I also put BLM on the back burner (my grandkids are dark skinned and this whole movement is very important to us, but there are those out there who would disagree and have made their lives miserable). The quilt is made with Ricky Tims hand dyed fabric scraps, black cotton fabric, and cotton batting. It is an improv piece (no rulers were used of course) and quilted on my faithful home sewing machine.
Tiny Bubbles
by Lynn Randall
Honorable Mention
Calypso by Carol Moellers
Beach Dreams
by Teresa Stoller
Honorable Mention
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Second Place Be..... by Denese DeGrandis Artist Statement: This year our lives have been rocked by challenges that leave us wondering how best to move forward. A horrific pandemic, devastating natural disasters and societal struggles for long overdue change. We find ourselves missing what we cannot have; time with our loved ones and friends in person. However, being grateful that we can, at least, FaceTime, Zoom and message. Our so-called new normal has given us a lot to reflect upon. I wanted my quilt challenge to clearly and visually state the importance of how simple actions can help us navigate through these crises. Searching for the right words led me to the idea of creating a word search quilt. In order to keep the quilt within the allowable size for the challenge my nine patch squares needed to be small - 1” finished. That meant my letters needed to be smaller than that; yikes! The idea of cutting and using a machine button hole appliqué stitch around ninety nine letters approximately 3/4” or less sent me quickly returning to the drawing board. But I always came back to that original plan. In the end, I just got down to work with my Granny’s voice reminding me that if I was going to do a job then it had to be done right! I wanted the background for the word search to be a patchwork quilt to show similarities and differences all beautifully cohesive together! For the list of hidden words I placed them all around the word search rectangle. I tried to draw font styles and choose colours to the match the meaning of each word; big bold oranges for strong, the multicoloured scrap for creative and so on. Keeping the importance of the focus fabric was the reason to use it for the directive ‘Be ... ‘ and with the stars symbolizing our everyday heroes. Whereas the tiny word search letters were labour intensive the list of words were so much fun to create. Definitely from a cutting and appliqué perspective bigger is way better and less stressful! For the quilting I used an all over scribbling design around the word search, letters and stars. In the word search background I quilted straight lines to emphasize the patchwork quilt look. Finally I decided the binding should be made of bits and pieces sewn together to wrap the quilt and to symbolize our unity and diversity. Effervescent Jungle Honorable Mention
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