Anything Goes Round Robin ~ Puzzling Spumoni!

Over the years I’ve participated in many Round Robin exchanges in the guilds I’ve belonged to: “Add a Border”, “Row by Row”, and “Around the Square”, just to name a few. Probably the most unique one was held by the Milwaukee Art Quilters and it was called “Anything Goes”. I did a post about it way back in 2010, but I’ll be participating in a new Anything Goes challenge in a new Fiber Arts guild (more info to come 😉  ), and thought it was a good time to revisit this fun idea.

So, here are the rules: there are none! Each participant chooses a block, a hunk of fabric, a small failed project, a piece of fabric they’ve dyed or painted – anything goes. This item is placed in a paper bag with some symbol recognizable only to the owner (the owner is not revealed until the end of the rounds), and they are all thrown in a pile on the floor. Everyone picks a new bag, opens it, and pictures are taken for future reference. This works best if there are 4 or 5 in each group, so if you have more participants, divide into groups first.

Oh – I forgot to mention, there is one rule – you can’t be upset by what you get back  😀 !

I began with 3 large, hexagon log cabin blocks from a failed 1995 workshop where the teacher discovered half way through that the blocks wouldn’t fit together and the class ended.

The fabrics were dated, and I had no idea what else to do with the blocks, so in the bag they went. The first person chopped up two of the blocks and sewed them back together into long strips (the next few pictures were made using Photoshop, because back then we didn’t take step-by-step pictures – they may not be perfect, but you get the idea).

The second person thread painted a peacock feather on a new piece of fabric, and bordered it with the pieced unit strip.

The third didn’t like it at all, so she chopped everything up again and added a bunch of stuff from her scrap bag. She then cut this new “fabric” into jigsaw puzzle shaped pieces and pinned them onto a piece of black fabric.

The fourth artist said she was at a loss for the first 29 days of the month. The last day she stared at it, and was so frustrated, she went out for ice cream. When she returned, she was inspired. She removed a few of the pieces and put a cherry on top!

This is how it was returned to me, so I put it in a dish and added the spoon.

The handle of the spoon sticks off the quilt and is supported by a dowel in a sleeve. The shape of the dish is the shape of the lower half of the quilt. I was very pleased and named it “Puzzling Spumoni”! All but one of the other pieces in the challenge turned out great. We each tried new techniques and grew as artists while having fun.

I highly recommend trying an Anything Goes challenge with your friends.

If you’d like to get in on the Anything Goes challenge I’m participating in, our new Milwaukee area fiber art group is called Thread Benders and we will be meeting the third Wednesday in September in Brookfield. Email me for more information!