Elgin Piecemaker's Challenge Reveal.

The Elgin Piecemaker's guild has issued a challenge each year for the past few years to the members to create a project with certain parameters...this year we each had to bring a yard of batik to our November meeting.  I brought the bright blue fabric at the top of the picture below.   We stood in a  circle, each holding our yard of fabric in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other hand.  We were instructed to fold our fabric in half, make a small snip with the scissors at the fold and then rip the fabric in half, drop half on the floor in front of us and pass the other half to the person beside us.  We continued to fold it, snip it, rip it, drop it and pass it until we ended up with 7 pieces of fabric.  The challenge was to create a project using our fabrics and any other fabrics we wanted to add to it by our March meeting, when the projects would be revealed. 

I had three challenge projects to make after Christmas and wanted to have all of them done before QuiltCon in February.  I decided to make a bag for my counted cross stitching.  Since I do a lot of stitching in the car, I wanted it to include a place to keep my scissors and an extra needle or two, both of which can easily go missing in the car.

I used two of the fabrics on the outside of the bag.

Fabric number 3 was used for the zipper tab.

Fabric #4 was used for the lining of the bag.

I made a scissor holder with the 5th fabric.  The scissors fold up so they won't poke through the bag.  Since they are attached to the bag, they will not fall on the floor or in between the seats if I drop them.

The last two fabrics were used to make a needle book for my extra needles and a few pins.

My embroidery hoop and cross stitch supplies all fit into the bag. This is a big improvement on the ziplock plastic bag I was using previously!

We had two guest judges who chose a first place and runner up from all of the projects.  Then, everyone in the group got to pick their favourite for the viewer's choice award. There was a lot of variety and creativity in everyone's projects...Wall hangings, table runners, a pillow, a purse, and mini quilts.

Julie won the honourable mention award for her bag.  The judges were Lorna and Heather.

Debbie won the Judges choice award for her modern table runner.  She stayed up all night to complete her project on time!

The viewer's choice prize went to Diane for her mini American Beauty quilt.

Congratulations to the winners and to all who participated in the challenge.  It is amazing to see what everyone made with their challenge fabrics!