The Mola Challenge and RAFA - November Meeting

The deadline for the Mola Challenge is November 15. This was a challenge by Pat Pauly to our RAFA group. We all own numerous molas which we have purchased from Priscilla Kibbee. We were to pick one of our favorites and make a quilt inspired by some aspect of the mola. Pat actually found someone from outside who will act as a judge. The prize will be a mola!! A dinner (which I can't attend) will follow up to celebrate the completion. I figure everyone is pretty much finished by now so letting the cat out of the bag will be okay! We have to turn them in next week at quilt club and I certainly hope everyone gets up for show and tell!

This quilt is about 45 inches x 60 inches. One of the criteria was that it had to be larger than 24 x 24. I have used all of my own hand dyed fabrics for this and designed all the blocks using EQ (Electric Quilt). It looks pretty simple but trust me it wasn't!! The strips on the triangles were two different sizes so they would elongate and those spirals -- you won't believe how many times I pieced some of those as it would look right for two rounds and you would reach an impasse -- also the reversing -- not pretty. I also drafted the leaves for the paper piecing (which I hate to do by the way but thought it would be faster -- not sure it was!!). Don't know whether this is the quilted picture or not as who sees quilting on black!! It is minimally quilted (stitch in the ditch and some background) as well as heavily on the leaves. I always do fairly representational but think I was mainly inspired by the composition itself and all the colors. So I really wanted to convey the colorfulness and the base composition of the mola. Molas are almost universally "landscape" but I preferred the portrait orientation for this one.

This is the mola that was my inspiration!

Check out Priscilla Kibbee's blog as she almost always has some for sale there and her prices and quality are both excellent.

There were not as many pieces as usual at RAFA today as many were still working on their challenge pieces or pieces for the DeCadence exhibit we are having at the Arts Council in January. I am submitting my birds of paradise piece for that show.

The next two pieces were by a very prolific Caris Burton who does absolutely awesome work. Not only is she an expert appliquer and piecer but she does all sorts of surface design and lots of it!

This piece was just a little study but I think she had four of those here today!

This was a One Block Wonder quilt top done by Mary Rankin. I have such a weakness for hexagons and stack and whacks and do like this format!

This was the piece that will be part of the DeCadence exhibit.

Sarah Terry modelled her new outfit made totally from her hand dyes and in a class with Sandra Betzina that she took out in San Francisco a few weeks ago. She got all sorts of fantastic fitting instructions and loved the class.

This was the piece Linda Bachman did as a result of the Mary Diamond class she took in October. She is another prolific art quilter!

Anne Fischer has been dabbling again in surface design using up some of her old paints. Beautiful piece and I am sure it will be well used in a composition at some point!

It was also announced that Pat Faulkner got one of her quilts in the new Lark publication on 500 Art Quilts. Another RAFA member, Nancy Murty, has her quilt on the COVER!! It won a major prize at Houston a couple of years back and is an awesome piece!