Sorry to hear that Maureen, if your circumstances influence your thoughts on the picture that is just fine. Why not incorporate an element that links with your friend and her husband and that can make the quilt more meaningful for you and maybe help you make it.
It will mean something completely different to the next person as we've just demonstrated.

Maureen, I am positive the Muses will come. They will meet you where you are and then the work will begin.

loise98 wrote:
Thanks Lois, Can you send them a bit harder please I have a friend who is going into hospital for a large operation on her spine and her husband has just been diagnosed with cancer so I keep getting a mental block. I have been jotting down ideas since I got the photo but when I sit down to draw them out, I keep thinking off my friend. I will try and get myself in order, as I would like to get on with the quilt.

Rosemary, I don't know what I was doing wrong but I managed to find the quilt your way. I'd prefer working from the whole quilt design and will agree to get over my problem with the colors not reading right on my computer. I need practice just ignoring some of my stumbling blocks. It might be interesting to use both pictures of for inspiration. If we were given a real quilt we could look at it from both close up and far away. What say all of you?

Maureen, It will be such fun to learn more about the photographer. I am thinking about you lots these days and I am asking the universe to send lots of creative muses your way so that they may ease your work, let it flow and allow you to have very much fun with what you are doing.

Renata wrote:
Renata, the name of the award winning photographer is Kim Phillips, she is local (further down the line I will tell you a bit about her) The photo was selected from a large selection of her beautiful photographs by the Loch Lomond Quilt Show team considering all sorts of aspects of it and how it could inspire us quilters.

loise98 wrote: It is still there - honest!
go to Quilt Gallery
check the box to see oldest first
on right hand side for next page go to page 9, it is 3-4 quilts down

Lois, I just thought 'how do I find a random quilt that I have no control over what it looks like', and seeing as there are hundreds & tha-sansds already here in the gallery, all numbered and easy to get at, I decided to just go with 100 - I didn't even look at it before I suggested it so it was a total surprise for me too. The whole point is that by just chosing a random number, we are not picking & chosing a quilt by looks or name that we think we can work from, we are just drawing a short straw and having to work from what we are given, much as will happen for the proper Chinese Whispers.

Actually I have really enjoyed doing the first one - it got the cogs moving and thinking through the design process, and actually having to present the idea(s) here on the forum and explain them helps to firm up the details in my mind, even if we don't actually make anything - that said, I do actually want to go ahead and make up my idea now, but it is going to be small scale pieces, good thing I wasn't planning on matchy-matchy seams

I just went back to The Gallery to look at 1000201 again and the result I got was "Cannot be found" ??? What's going on? Poldergeists in my computer?

Lois, I love what you did with Red Fury and especially how you brought it to life! I loved what everyone did with this little exercise and enjoyed reading what went into everyone's thought process in coming up with a new design. I also appreciate Rita and Nancy's comments back to me--they were indeed liberating.

I won't have a chance to play much with #1000200 this week but I did look at it and was gobsmacked by the astoundingly beautiful quilting. I also loved the colors and noticed the reverse prairie point in the beak which, for some strange reason brought my mind to the work of Ludmila Aristova, which I love. I'll still have to think about the design itself--it still does not speak to me...

As for the original photograph of the challenge, I cannot speak for how the photo was selected. However, I do recall that the photo is by an award-winning photographer. I don't remember her name right now and I am not at home so I can't go back and look for who she is--I think I read it in a Lochlomond newsletter...

I just looked at #1000201 and like the closeup the colors did not read well on my computer and frankly that is a stumbling block for me. Perhaps that's part of what the exercise is all about... getting over stumbling blocks. But it wouldn't hurt to have a little bit of a discussion about how we might choose a challenge quilt.

Hi Everybody, Thanks for the nice comments on my work. It was really fun. I did not stress over decisions, just did it. ....Not exactly usual for me. I picked #1000200 out of the blue and did not even know what it looked like when I posted the number. I was disappointed that it was just part of a whole and the colors did not seem to read well on my computer. I then looked at # 1000199 thinking whoever posted it would have shown the entire quilt first. I didn't look at #1000201. After your comments regarding that choice I got to thinking about how the actual photo might be choosen for the challenge. I doubt if they pick it out of a hat. Rosemary, how did you choose #1000100. Is there a better way to make these choices? I like these kinds of exercises for my quilting mind.

Having looked at both 1000200 & the bigger quilt, that the section comes from, I have to admit that I am now influenced by the whole thing in creating my response to it, because quite frankly, the close-up seemed very limited in what it was saying. Having said that I am trying to send my brain back to the close-up for more work.

rehak wrote: Nice observation Nancy, we are trying to see how we can go forward from a design, not backwards to the beginning, with this exercise. to see where it takes us (and to find out just how offbeat our minds can go )

Great little quilt Lois. I see how you got there now. I had a look at quilt 1000200 and it is difficult to work with just a section but the whole quilt doesn't help much either. And I made the fatal mistake of reading the blurb about it. Very interesting. I am happy to work on just the section if everybody else is happy too.