I love collaboration

Warning!  This is a long post with lots of photos.

My sister-in-law, Willa, is visiting from Virginia.  She brought with her the piece from the International Round Robin that I started.  To see what she brought, go here.  To see my original piece, go here. She also brought several wonderful red and blue fabrics to audition for the next round.  Before we started, however, we took a trip to Shibori Dragon and found even more wonderful fabrics to play with.  That evening, we started playing around with the layout on the living room floor.  After we found something we both liked, we moved everything to the design wall in the studio. I see things better when they are on the wall.

First, we had to cut the pieces to the right width. Willa did most of the cutting while I measured and put them up on the wall.

Cutting is serious business. Willa is on the left.  See my Woodstock t-shirt? 

As we added strips to the wall, Tom was worried about all the white space and how we were going to fill them in.  I think he was worried until it was finally done.

Little by little, it started coming together.  At one point, we had decided to add a curved element to the left side to complement the other curves in the piece that I like so much.  Then, Willa suggested adding the three strips to the bottom piece and I wanted the strip at the top because I really wanted to have a little bit of that fabric in the piece.  When Willa saw the angled bottom to that top strip, she suggested that the bottom strips be angled as well.

Here is the piece with all of our additions. We added the different borders in a deliberate way to create the hint of a Torii gate.  It is hard to see in the photo, but the top piece is a beautiful piece of traditional Japanese indigo fabric. 

Willa and I don't get enough time to quilt together, so this was great fun for me.  She has a wonderful sense of color and design, and as a teacher, she has great collaboration skills.  We have known each other for a long time and have done a number of arts and crafts together over the years, from gardening to crochet to cross-stitch to quilting. It has all been a wonderful journey, but I love the quilting the best.

 I love the way this piece has come together.  There is one more person who will add to it before it is done, but I am really happy that Willa and I got to play with it to this stage.

Joyful quilting, everyone.