Even the most avid crafters, the most enthusiastic quilt club friends or passionate guild members need a little creative shake-up occasionally. Craft challenges, the phenomenon currently sweeping both online and in-the-flesh creative communities, can be a solution. Devised to test everything from creativity to speed, fundraising abilities to personal boundaries, challenges offer crafters in all fields the opportunity to pitch in with their cohorts and share the wellspring of ideas lurking within all of us.
Every fortnight between February and November last year the team behind New South Wales’ Scrapbook Savvy (who gather at www.scrapbooksavvy.com.au [scrapbooksavvy.com.au]) faced a new posting on the company’s online conversation (blog) concerning what they called ‘The Book of Me’ challenge. The idea behind this challenge was to create “a record” of each participant’s life - “your loves and your own personal story” was how they described it.
"This is not a competition, but a participation,” declared the crew behind the dare. “At the end of November, if you take up the challenge, you will have 22 layouts that reflect on all the things that make you you!” What a concept.
There were small “participation” prizes along the way but this ‘Savvy’ exercise underlies the core strengths of the challenge concept. It invites people to set themselves a goal, to go out on a limb and share their work and to interact with other people who share their passions.
In New Zealand, at the Daring Cardmakers blog, a team of cardmakers from the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, declared they wanted to “inspire and encourage” their members to make wonderful cards.
Every Friday at about 10am UK, 7pm Australian and 9pm NZ time, one of the design team posts a new dare/challenge, along with their own creations to get particpants inspired.
Jane Leishman from Daring Cardmakers says the group is looking to inspire people to “think outside” their normal square. “By setting challenges we are encouraging people to make cards and leave us a link to their designs so that others can go online and look at their creations,” she explains.
“When I first thought about setting up a challenge site the other sites around were almost exclusively for scrapbookers... I thought it would be good to have a challenge site dedicated to us cardmakers solely.
“We run challenges of every topic you can imagine. We’ve had challenges on making a card with something from the kitchen where the girls used everything from napkins to food colouring, even cupcake cases.
“One reader tells us that she is on the internet the minute we launch a new dare so that she can be first to put up her hand and say she’s made a card! Its like being part of an online community. Often we’ve found new design team members from our ‘audience’ - another incentive to join in,” says Jane.
One of our favourite examples of the group’s creative challenges was called ‘It’s a Wrap’ and involved making a coat for a card - one “made of acetate, vellum or anything for that matter” was how they put it. As long as it wrapped around the outside of a card, anything was acceptable.
Yarn lovers don’t sway from a challenge either. Over at crochetalong.wordpress.com [crochetalong.wordpress.com] the theme was ‘Work In Progress’ and the team ran its own crochet Olympics. The guidelines were straightforward: “Use an existing WIP (work in progress) or start a new one, then post (publish) photos of your progress throughout the Olympics.”
“Your challenge,” instructed the organisers, “is to complete your work by the closing ceremony of the games (24 August). You’re only competing against yourself and what you choose to make is up to you. Your items should be some kind of challenge though - it’s not impressive to complete a one hour Amigurumi (Japanese style knitted or crocheted small stuffed animal) in the next 17 days!... If you want to participate, post a pic of your WIP and then get crocheting! You can post more pics throughout the challenge to show us how you are progressing. And we can all cheer each other on as we get closer to the finish.”
Marjorie Tuffnell, Co-Ordinator of Tasmania’s Not Just Cloth Dolls Club, says a new member, who’d participated in challenges with a previous doll making group, recently introduced the challenge of a Round Robin ‘Doll-in-a box’ to her Club and the results were just “great fun”.
“We’ve been meeting once a month at Goodwood Community Centre in Hobart since 2002,” says Marjorie. “There are around 20 core members and others come and go when they can. Our days are very social and hands on. We sit ‘round the table, working on projects and discussing them. Sometimes a guest might come and do a workshop with us. Our dolls are really collectible soft sculptures, all original works, both hand and machine sewn.”
Each member of the group made a body and head of a doll, with a finished face, and put it in a shoe box. At the next meeting the boxes were swapped around, with everyone taking off with a box made by (presumably) anonymous hands.
“The doll was bald, legless and armless,” says Marjorie. “Beside it lay a small journal where each maker could add a comment to go with the work they’d done. You were not to show anyone the doll in the box you’d received. In the next stage you added the arms to the doll you took home.”
From there you can imagine how the process moves on. Month by month the dolls took form, growing hair and legs and slipping into costumes. Embellishments were part of the process, even hats. The group started in February and, by July, the boxes were gathered at the monthly meeting and “the big reveal” commenced.
“Everyone was dying to see how their original dolly turned out,” says Marjorie. “I think some people found it really challenging. For starters, there was no pattern for the body so we had to work out the proportions ourselves. One member had her work cut out for her. She couldn’t really get the dress to fit the unique body she’d ended up with. In the journal she asked for the next participant to lend a hand to improve the outfit. Luckily a dressmaker was the next person involved.”
The Round Robin led to interesting discussions amidst the group, touching on topics that may not normally have come up. “We talked about how we felt about our work being ‘tampered with’ I suppose you’d call it,” says Marjorie. “There was a lot more noise and excitement around the tables each month as we discussed the idea of playing with other people’s work. I think most of us were genuinely anxious to see what was happening to our dolls. There was animated excitement and, I think, on the whole, everyone was pretty happy with the outcome.”
In fact, according to Marjorie, the whole experience opened her eyes to “other ways of doing things”. “I learned by looking at the work others had chosen to do,” she says.
For Not Just Cloth Dolls Club the results of this particular challenge underscore some of the best reasons why such activities work. “I think it expands on what we’re doing throughout the year,” she says. “Plus, it keeps the group dynamic. You have to stop and think when you’re asked to make something to a set of rules. I’ll give you another example. In the past we just had the theme of ‘Winter Wonderland’ as a challenge. You should have seen what transpired: ice queens and snowmen and even a character called Lady De Winter. These were displayed at the Hobart Craft & Quilt Fair last June.
“Our next challenge will most likely start early in 2009 and be finished in time for the dolls to be displayed at the Craft & Quilt Fair at the end of June. It will be based on a panel of fabric depicting buxom dancing ladies with fancy masks - all dressed to kill. Members will be asked to make and dress dolls to represent these as near as possible. We are just a small club but have lots of fun. As well as challenges we also enjoy doing inter-club pin doll swaps and our annual weekend camp.”
Useful links:
Not Just Cloth Dolls Club:
Co-ordinator - Tel: (03) 62447799
E: tuffytas@yahoo.com.au
www.scrapbooksavvy.com.au [scrapbooksavvy.com.au]
www.daringcardmakers.blogspot.com [daringcardmakers.blogspot.com]
www.crochetalong.wordpress.com [crochetalong.wordpress.com]
We love a challenge!
‘get creative’ staff love testing their skills and trying new creative endeavours. Gale Wickes, our Creative Coordinator, is a passionate quilter who, through the various groups she belongs to, has been participating in challenges for years.
“Waverley Patchworkers (in Victoria) holds a show every two years - at the end of May - and we always stage a challenge,” says Gale. “This time we had the best response ever with 75 members producing 9 x 12 inch quilts to the theme of ‘Oriental Influence’.
The Waverley group, with a 300-strong membership, had chosen an over-arching theme for its 2008 event of ‘East meets West’ in honour of the Beijing Olympics. Participants in the challenge, who had around four months to complete their projects, could use any technique and the presentation could be in either portrait or landscape format.
“In 2006 the challenge centred around the club’s 25 year anniversary,” says Gale. “The works produced then had to illustrate 25 specific different techniques so only 25 could be made - names were drawn from a hat to determine who would take part. In 2004, using specific dimensions, we had to use one block repeatedly in the design, using no borders whatsoever.”
Gale says challenges are useful on many levels, one of them being the chance they give people to try new techniques or ideas but on a small scale. “Take the 2004 one as an example,” she says. “I had never tried paper piecing before. That was my first foray.”
Similarly, as someone who has dipped her toes into international challenges (posting things to co-conspirators overseas) and local ones in altered
books as well as quilt related fields, Gale compares these activities to workshops; they are an opportunity to learn about your chosen art or craft, and to learn about yourself as well.
“Take an altered book I did. I gave the theme I wanted at the front of it in the hope that, page by page, others would adhere to it,” says Gale. “Many of them took no notice at all. Fair enough! Similarly one friend was in a quilt challenge and the thing she ended up with was hideous. What does she do? Does she have to display it in her home?”
On a more optimistic note, Gale’s a big believer that challenges are particularly good for those keen to improve their skills and gain confidence. “At Waverley the recent batch of work demonstrated how popular art quilting is becoming within our group.” she says. “Some members, especially those newer to quilting, don’t have the confidence to bring pieces out at ‘Show and Tell’ sessions. A challenge lets them put a toe in the water in terms of sharing their work. The results can be surprising. Similarly, when you’re asked to pass your work from one person to the next, you can actually learn a new skill or approach that you would never have considered. It’s like everything in life, if you want to get something out of it you will.”
The small six-person friendship group that Gale is also a member of doesn’t shy away from challenges either. Recently they passed around six shoe boxes each containing six empty paper bags.“Month by month we added two fat quarters to the box, sealing up the previous two in a corresponding bag, with the aim that the previous two patterns and colours inspired the choice of the next two,” she explains. “The results were fascinating. Some of them went way off on tangents. Mine came out the kookiest. Some of us had looped back around, unknowingly choosing the same fabrics that had featured earlier. We’ve talked about making something from the final six but mine are already washed and stashed in my fat quarter bags. We’ll see.”
Find out more
www.waverleypatchworkers.com.au [waverleypatchworkers.com.au]
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