When I volunteered to arrange programs for one of my modern guilds this year, I didn’t realize the job included coming up with a challenge each month.  Luckily, there were lots of ideas for guild challenges in internet-world, so the challenges weren’t too much of a challenge.  (Sorry, that just slipped in!)

I thought it might be helpful to other modern guilds if I posted our proposed challenges, since I’m sure other folks are in need of ideas, too.  So here’s the first one: slabs.  If you don’t know what a slab quilt block is, Canadian quilter Cheryl Arkison published the idea in her book Sunday Morning Quilts.  You can see a picture and instructions here.

Slabs can be addictive!  And a quilt of many colors is fun.

In January, each member received brief instructions on how to make a “slab” of a single color of the rainbow.  Sort of.  While trying to figure out how to set up the rainbow challenge, I found this quote from Isaac Asimov (one of my heroes):

It is customary to list indigo as a color lying between blue and violet, but it has never seemed to me that indigo is worth the dignity of being considered a separate color. To my eyes it seems merely deep blue.

So our colors for the challenge are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.  Seems like the main value of indigo and violet is that they let us spell out ROY G BIV.  Huh.

Our slabs are 15-1/2 inches square, to be 15 inch finished blocks.  Each person makes one in her assigned color, then can make as many others as she wants in as many of the six basic colors as she wants.  At the next meeting, we’ll put all our slabs in a pile and each person’s name will go in a basket once for each block she turns in.  Then we’ll draw a name and somebody gets all the blocks.  Of course she’s expected to make something wonderful with those blocks before the next meeting!

I e-mailed examples of slab quilts to guild members as part of the challenge and also took some of my quilts to show.

Jerri Szlizewski combined her purple slabs with neutral slabs, then appliqued purple dots on the neutral backgrounds

I cut up the yellow-orange slabs I got in a swap and inserted blue

Does your modern guild have some great challenge ideas?  Let me know!  I’ll be posting about our other challenges as we go along so you can use them, too.