Ocean color blocks

I've mentioned before that I joined a sub-group of my quilt guild that focuses on making art quilts. The group is called Beyond the Block. It meets once a month (the guild meets quarterly) and has ongoing projects, exhibits and learning opportunities so I find it very engaging and inspiring. These quilters have many non traditional techniques and generally do not use patterns. I find though that many of the ladies make "modern art" or expressive works as you will see from these examples. 

To keep everyone moving forward and thinking about projects there is always one or two "challenges" to work on. A recent one that was just completed and revealed at a meeting was the "Ocean" challenge. The ocean was an inspiration for color and not intended for the subject. The parameters for the challenge was simply "ocean colors" and "finished size 12 inches by 12 inches". This seemed simple enough so I did get a block made.

Here are the blocks that were made. There is quite a variety of ideas but also similarities...

 

If you can see here, the wave in the middle of the design
has bits of fabric in a loosely woven roll for texture and substance.

 

This uses a technique for making curves that I need to try. 
The raw edges of the fabric are finished with yarn that is sewn 

over the edge for a clean and easy way to make curved shapes 

(rather than some kind of seam between two fabrics that is much more challenging).

Notice the raised texture in the white area.

I'm always curious where the ideas come from.

This is my block. I started with the leaf fabric from another workshop 

we did learning to use Gelli printing techniques on fabric with natural 

leaves and materials. I liked that I worked with something new I had learned 

in the group. 

After seeing all the blocks, the group decided to plan on a future exhibit using them as well as two new similar challenges. There will be three groups of these twelve inch blocks, each with a theme. I suggested that the two new themes be "Mountain" and "Desert" for color ideas like this "ocean" but maybe that was too prosaic? One group will be based on paint chip color groups and one on "words". I think. Something like that. We'll see.  

 I also finished this quilt top and showed it to the guild during our "sharing" time. The shadow block was taught in a workshop several years ago so I was glad to finally finish this project. It has a 3-D effect that would have been stronger if I had made the shadow fabric (on the left and bottom of the squares) a little wider. Now I have to decide if I'm going to take my time to hand quilt this or send it to a professional machine quilter to get it done quickly. 

I hope you enjoyed this quilt show!