Me and my BIG Mouth!

I belong to a small quilt group/guild that meets near my home. The Citrus County Crackers Quilters have about 65 members, and usually over 40 show up at the meetings. I think that is great attendance, and speaks for the value ladies find in attending. Each meeting has a few drawings for prizes, offers a chance for folks to show off their current quilts or quilted objects, offers a few classes, taught by members and has a few fun events through the year. 

One enjoyable event is the annual challenge. The Challenge is presented in February and members have until the Christmas party at the end of the year to create something to address the challenge. I wrote about my work on the challenge for 2025.   I enjoy the process, and I have always enjoyed presenting a challenge for my students, way back when, and for my friends. Some of the past challenges for the CCCQ, I've been told, include having ladies pull 3 crayons out of a bag, and their creation must include those colors. Another time they were given magazines and had to open to a random page, and use colors from a picture on that page as colors for their quilts. And, this past year's challenge was called, "Red on Red" where we had to include...red! 

The woman who ran the challenge this past year chatted with me after she had asked to have someone else do the challenge....and I raised my hand! Of course I did! She told me that she had planned to use "Winter White" as a challenge. She felt that if you make the challenge easy, more people will participate. I understand that, but I also think a challenge should inspire the folks to try something new or different. 

I did look online to see what other clubs have done. One idea I liked was,  "Never ever have I...." where sewists could pick a quilting technique they have never used, or make a quilted garment or a quilted bag. The other idea I liked was having folks up-cycle different materials to use in a project. 

The hand sewing group met the other day. I shared the ideas with them. They weren't sold on them. We chatted about other ideas, when somehow the idea of using a map to select an area in the worl

as inspiration for a quilt was voiced. For example, China or the Netherlands. We started laughing at the idea of using a 'pin the tail on the donkey' method for selecting your country. As most of the ladies are in their 60's and beyond, we decided that might not be safe... even if we didn't turn folks around first! 

At that point, one of the members of our little group practically jumped up and reminded us, "It's the 250th birthday of our country. We should use a US map." From there, bouncing ideas back and forth, we decided that folks would draw a slip of paper out of a hat, with the name of a state on it. Their quilt/project must depict something about that state: state flower or bird, industry in the state, the motto of the state...well, you get the idea. 

So, why am I chastising myself for stepping up to the plate? It's not the idea of running the challenge...I got that. My eyes are rolling because my predecessor always shared an example of a quilt/project that met the requirements of the challenge....a different one each month! Yeah....