Hope

 The Challenge for our Art Group this last quarter was to write a Haiku poem and then create a quilt based on the poem.  A haiku poem is vert short--3 lines--the first line is 5 syllables, the 2nd is seven syllables and the 3rd is five.  Here is my poem:
Life's many circles,
Reaching to include us all--
Containing Love's Hope.
And so I named my quilt Hope.
I had made the the petal-type shapes in a workshop with Phillipa Naylor earlier this year and felt that they could be my starting point.  I then added circles--and more circles--that were connected to each other.

This is the quilt after it was quilted.  If you look closely, you can see the pins where it is being blocked in order to square it up before I add the binding.  Before I block it, I add a little synthrapol to coolish water and then immerse the quilt into it.  I swish it around to get it good and wet and then rinse it out.  I wrap the wet quilt in towels to remove the excess moisture.  Then I spread it out on the CLEAN carpet and start smoothing and stretching to bring it into square as much as possible.  I always need to block my quilts because of my tight quilting stitches.

 And this is the finished quilt.  You can't really see it in this picture, but there is a very tiny piping next to the binding, ala the Susan Cleveland method.
One thing I decided to do with this small quilt was to play with various elements as I went--and to just have as much fun with it as possible--using threads, stitches and techniques that I don't ordinarily incorporate into my work.

 This is some of the beading I did.  I sewed on the beads before I quilted.

And the background quilting is composed of jutting lines from variegated thread.  You can also see the gold thread I used on the red "leaves."

And the quilting with gold thread went well.  As a final touch before I quilted, I used my braiding foot and sewed down mettalic embroidery floss with red rayon thread.  This technique joined the four corner circles and, thus, encircled the other circles in the center.
All in all, I really enjoyed myself.  For me, one of the freeing and fun things to do is to participate in a Challenge and just enjoy the journey of discovery along the way.