Project Quilting 13.1: All the Colors

Project Quilting Season 13 is here and I am so excited as this will be my 7th year of participating in these one-week challenges. Trish, aka PQ challenge mistress, set this week's challenge theme as "All the Colors" requiring that we revel in ALL THE COLORS!

Instead of starting with color, this week's inspiration came from these black and white wonky doodles. On New Year's Eve, I participated in a 22-hour Artsy Meetup Marathon featuring an amazing line up of mixed media demos. I didn't have the endurance to last the entire 22 hours, but popped in whenever I could and played with the supplies I had on hand. One of the demos that I missed was Sarah Trumpp's Wonky Wonka Sisters Doodle Using One Line. After seeing some of the amazing wonky portraits doodled by the other participants during the show and tells, I was eager to catch the recording to learn more. Monday evening, the email came out with the link to watch and I headed straight for this demo. 

I confess that I was a little nervous as portraits are definitely way outside my comfort zone. Thanks to Sarah's fantastic demos, I was amazed at how easy and fun they were to create! In fact, I just kept doodling these wonky portraits creating a trio of new personas. 

The next day I was still thinking about these wonky portraits and eager to doodle more. As they are drawn using a single line without lifting the pen off the paper, they might adapt well to free-motion quilting without breaking thread. I was eager to find a way to incorporate them into my Project Quilting entry but needed to figure out a potential layout. Before I could get started on my project, I was scheduled to attend a Zoom meeting. Across the screen was a grid of all these colorful personalities and studio spaces. Eureka! Why not create a wholecloth Zoom meeting featuring wonky portraits?!? 

I confess that during a significant portion of that meeting I was sketching and jotting down ideas to incorporate into my imaginary Zoom meeting. Immediately after the meeting I pulled out some solid white fabric and started to prepare a quilt sandwich. Instead of a tidy grid of boxes, I wanted to add some wonkiness into my fictional Zoom meeting and used scrap paper to space out the various windows for each attendee. Blue painter's tape was then used to outline each wonky shaped frame and a rainbow of threads were pulled to stitch each colorful character.

That was the extent of my design planning! Starting with purple, I started to improvisationally free-motion quilt wonky portraits trying to stay within the taped boundaries (ocassionally repositioning the tape as needed). I had so much fun embellishing each colorful character with some of my favorite FMQing filler designs, especially to create their funky hairdos.

The next day I stitched their frames, names, necks, and a few whimsical details. Many thanks to family and friends who provided name suggestions for my completely fictional characters, which included:

• Penelope, who was leading the meeting and quite pleased by how well the meeting was going according to her detailed and down-to-the-minute timed agenda.
• Fiona confidently rocking her Zoom look from the torso up, complete with ice cream cone and polar bar pajama bottoms and pink bunny slippers.
• Oscar, who is frantically trying to type up the meeting minutes, despite his feline companion Arabelle plopping herself on the keyboard, wondering why she isn't being doted on at the moment. She is fairly unimpressed with the meeting and is contemplating how much force will be required to knock the container of pens and highlighters off Oscar's desk.
• Poor Frederick accidentally overslept this morning and was rushing to log into the meeting. He impressed himself by logging in just as the meeting started, until his camera came on and he saw his wild bed head hair!
• Once again free-spirit Olivia is experiencing technical difficulties on her iPad...or is she? Last week, she looked like she super focused while holding different yoga poses. 
• Sebastian is trying to calm his nerves as he is up next to present and desperately wants to make a good impression (and perhaps catch the attention of Fiona?) He is extra nervous as the last time he tried to share his screen, he inadvertently shared an email from his mother containing his 7th grade photo, complete with thick glasses, a bout of acne, posing with his favorite action figure!

Additional quilting was added to the background (grey zig zag meander and white pebbles) before adding a few accents using a rainbow of metallic Gelli Roll pens.

 Fiona is modeling off her before and after pops of metallic pen accents...

Here are "all the colors" of 40wt Superior Omni and Isacord threads used for the quilting...in addition to a sneak peek of the rainbow stripe used for the binding.

Speaking of binding, I couldn't resist using a black micron pen to recreate the Zoom control panel bar along the binding.

This vibrant backing fabric also includes "All the Colors."

And here is my finished "Zany Zoomtopia" wholecloth quilt which celebrates all the colorful quilting connections made over the past 2 years via Zoom meetings, lectures, and workshops!

"Zany Zoomtopia" finishes 21" x 22"

I encourage you to check out all the colorful array of quilts started and finished for this week's Project Quilting 13.1 "All the Colors" challenge!