We were inspired to make this after seeing the fabulous panel quilts at the Dallas Quilt Festival in 2008, and we finished it in 2009. The idea was that we would take a single picture, blow it up, and each take two parts. Then when reassembled, they'd make one unified quilt.
We chose this nativity from a copyright-free dover coloring book, and divided it up. We made our blocks independently with no knowledge of what techniques or colors the others were using. My mom had the unfortunate task of having to reassemble it, and she said that I didn't do a very good job of staying in the lines. Not so much a problem artistically speaking, but definitely a problem in terms of assembly of a unified finished piece!
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| Group Nativity, c. 2009 36" x 51" |
I made the top right panel (the monochrome black and white one) and the middle bottom. I'm sorry I don't have any more detailed pictures. I love that the cow is black in my section and brown in my Mom's sections! I thought that doing the monochromatic stained glass look in one of my sections would provide something different. I was hoping that by making baby Jesus the only thing colored, that he would draw the focus. I think it would have worked better if the whole quilt had been that theme, but in this case I think that block doesn't go well with the rest. This is a really fun quilt up close, we used lots of different fabrics for it: silks, quilting fabrics, home-dec stuff, furry things, etc. All kinds of small leftovers from other projects, so the surface has lots of texture.
I hope you enjoy! Have any of you made group quilts like this? How'd it go?
