Puzzled!

Back at the beginning of the year, one of my goals was to complete the 3 Creative Studios 2010 Quilt Challenge. Every two months, there is a theme and each participant should finish a quilt of their choosing with that theme. This is different for me, as I normally do not work with someone else's ideas. I have plenty of ideas of my own, and never enough time to sew them! It is good discipline to work with whatever you've been given, so hence the challenge for me.

So, as you've probably deduced by now, the theme for Jan/Feb is the word "puzzle". Right. I have been puzzling over this for almost four weeks now. I know have two months to make the quilt, but if you know how I work, I spend at least as much time percolating an idea as I do making it come to life. This is how I work on my art garments, I plan anywhere from 6 to 12 months in advance. My strategy for these quilts is to percolate for a month and create for a month.

Knowing that my time was getting short, and I'd need plenty of time to actually make something - you know it will probably be labor intensive and have a bazillion beads (ok, at least a hundred beads!) - I had to come up with something, but what? I started by researching puzzles - word games, picture puzzles, 3D puzzles - of various cultures. Nope, not inspiring. Then I looked up things that puzzle scientists. Nothing there inspiring. From there I started to think about not only scientists, but other people who have jobs that require them to solve puzzles. That naturally made me think about my brother and his fiancee, who are both archaeologists. In part, archaeologists do digs to find artifacts to answer questions and solve puzzles as to how people lived and their motivations for leaving behind the items, big and small, that they did.

From there, my brain skipped to a conversation I had with a lady in our church before choir practice this Sunday, who is a bit older than me, she having been a child in WWII. I mentioned that I collect "stuff" from the 1950's and always wondered to whom all those pieces belonged, why they were bought, where they were worn, etc. Then the light bulb went off.

I will make a quilt using various elements and representations of the items I've bought over the years and have puzzled about their previous owners.

Now to figure out how to make this quilt. Tune in next Tuesday for an update on this project!

Parting Shot: Kitty Cubby. Back to his old tricks, Wellie has found a new spot to hide from and to surprise his friend, Kiwi.