A Whisper Quilt Project 09-20-21

A Whisper Quilt project is like the childhood game of "Whisper" where the 1st child sitting in a circle whispers something to the second child.  She then repeats the whisper to child number three, who in turn whispers it to number four and so on around the circle.  It was great fun to see how much the whisper had changed when it came back to the first child.  With quilters the first person in the privacy of her sewing space makes a small quilt and then shows it to the second person, letting them keep it until the second person has made a quilt based on the first.  She then returns the first quilt to the maker and shows her own quilt to person number three who will base her quilt on that inspiration.  Nobody else will see the quilts except the maker and the next person on the list.  Our art quilt group in San Diego started our project over two years ago, but the pandemic rather slowed us down.  Instead of passing our quilts to the next person we started e-mailing pictures to the next person.  Only seven of the members participated and we all took an inordinate amount of time to make such small quilts.  However, we finally had our "reveal" at the in-person September meeting.  It was interesting to hear the explanations of why each quilt developed.  

The only “rule” is that it should be approximately 18” X 24”, either portrait or landscape orientation.  Any fabric or technique is acceptable.  The quilt must be quilted and have finished edges.

       

Andrea Bacal started us off with this view of cone flowers based on a picture she had taken.  

This is my quilt, based on Andrea's coneflowers.  Butterflies love coneflowers.  I had intended to add the white dots they display using white puff paint, but I forgot!  This is all fused with the orange/yellow of the wings one piece with the cutout black veins fused on top.  

Michalee Sloan was next.  She based her hidden tiger on the colors in my quilt with lots of green as in the background.  The leaves are made individually and tacked to make a 3-D jungle.  

Ellen Spellman followed with her delicate embroidery inspired by the intricacy of the hidden tiger and foliage.  She accented the blue in the tiger. 

Carol Sebastian-Nealy picked up on the geometric, but used squares instead of rectangles, repeating the vertical quilting.  Now called "matchstick", but was called "channel" quilting in the 70s. 

Deb McKay printed her own fish, repeating the five images and included the horizontal line from Carol's quilt. 

Nelda McComb started with a blue background as in Deb's quilt and created a whimsical view of her recently retired husband catching a fish.  

Here are the quilts pinned up in order at our meeting. 

It was an interesting project, but might have gone better without the complication of the pandemic and not being able to pass the actual quilts to the next person.  

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