Creativity Challenge

Last year about this time the Seams Possible ASG neighborhood group issued a challenge for each of its members to create something using their birth month as the inspiration.

I am a June baby so my inspiration was to use roses, pearls and the month itself as my inspiration.

The project was not due until this past November and, I must admit, I waited until almost the last minute to produce something.

It turns out that I had signed up for a landscape quilt class at the quilt festival and I convinced myself that I could turn it into something to meet the challenge.

This is what I produced:

Does it look like June to you?

Here's the back story.

In my family we moved lock, stock and barrel out to the beach on the May long weekend and stayed until Canadian Thanksgiving in October.

Our place was up on Georgian Bay where frosty mornings in June are not unusual.  Heck, I was even born on one!

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Although we acted like it was summer, summer really didn't happen July.

We put the sailboat on the beach, unpacked the sand chairs and generally convinced ourselves it was summer.

But it wasn't summer thus my picture of a lovely day at the beach with a raging hail storm reminding us that Mother Nature has a sense of humor.

I haven't figured out what to do with this creation but it does make me smile.

Construction notes:

• The background was fused to some Peltex which was also fused to some plain cotton.
• The details were fiddly cut from some conversational prints representing Nantucket, glued down with a glue stick and the edges free motion stutched down with invisble thread.
• The rain was primarily free motion quilted with black metallic thread.
• The grass was some free motion work with greenish thread.
• The hail stones are little pearls I sewed on to the surface.
• The black stuff is Misty Fuse...not as effective as I thought it would be as representing a gloomy day but close.

The countdown to Christmas was fully in evidence today when I ran out to pick up a couple of things.  There were lines at all the check out counters except for Petsmart (no idea why as the store was packed) and there was a general air of desperation on many faces. 

My favorite incident was when I stopped for lunch and there was a table full of elementary school kids with one one lone male adult.  It appears that several mothers decided to do some shopping and this lone Dad was tasked with keeping the kids busy of a couple of hours at a local restaurant.

That guy gets my vote as parent of the year!