Quilt Challenge

The first Thursday night of every month the Redwood Empire Quilters Guild meets in my home town, Eureka, CA. Eureka is a coastal town in 'way Northern California nearly to the Oregon border. There are only three roads into the city....Highway 101 to the north and the south and Highway 299 through the mountains over to Interstate 5. It's a 3 hour winding mountainous drive through the mountains East to Redding, CA. To the North or South it's roughly 5-6 hours to any standard sized city. So you might say we are isolated. Often we are referred to as being behind the Redwood Curtain. We have magnificent Redwood Forests and a rough and chilly Pacific Ocean to our West.

This isolation makes for creative and talented people. Many artists live here, and among them are the quilters. Tonight at Quilt Guild our members displayed their "Challenge Quilts." A challenge was laid down last year to make a quilt (wall hanging size) that included an animal, the color orange and polka dots. Interesting set of rules, wasn't it. I spent most of the Fall visiting my daughter in MN so I didn't participate, but here are just a small sampling of the quilts.

Miss Hippo 2011. Her bathing suit (love the frilly skirt) was 3-D and her nails were all shiny and pink.This possum mama had made little quilts for her babies....there are no names on the quilts for voting but I think this one was made by a dear woman who rescues possums.
This Corgi quilt was so life-like and I thought the way she incorporated the leash was clever.
I have a fondness for elephants and liked this quilt quite a lot. We couldn't vote on it as it was made by the Challenge Co-chair.
So much going on in this circus quilt...very creative...again we couldn't vote on this one as it was made by the other Co-chair.
This quilt used many three dimensional embellishments...the koala was fuzzy and the lambs were woolie too. It was sort of "one world" in that there were elements from Egypt, Australia, Switzerland and the tropics. I liked it.

One thing I should note is that these quilts all hung straight in "real life," but pinned to sheets they appeared to have wobbly borders. Not so in real life. Wish I could give credit to the creators and/or tell you who won, but alas, I had to leave before the winners were announced. A great job by all who entered!

Don't forget to comment. You've got until Sunday at 9 pm (pacific time) and I'll randomly pick a winner for a jar of my homemade Jalapeno Jelly. It is fantastic over cream cheese with wheat thins!