Mosaic Challenge

The Mosaic Challenge is the final 2024 challenge from The Endeavourers Art Quilt group. As usual, I had an idea for this quilt long ago, but the quilt I ended up making is not even close to my original idea. My inspiration for this piece comes from “pothole art”, where artists fill in potholes in cities around the world with mosaic art. I think it’s a cool way to take something unsightly and make it fun to see. Google it and you will see all kinds of examples.

Back in 2023, I participated in the Dreamlines Project from Serendipity Patchwork & Quilting. Each month we were given an improv technique, and at the end of the year, I had a bundle of improv strips. Those strips have been waiting patiently for me to decide how to use them. I used a few of them for this mosaic challenge and they worked perfectly.

After I had sewn a few of the strips together, I did a random cut, then framed that with a black print. Then I added the background Isidewalk) fabric along with some sidewalk “cracks”.

It didn’t turn out quite as I had planned, I feel it’s a little too angular. I wanted it to look more ragged, but couldn’t wrap my head around how to work that out with improv. That’s part of the enjoyment of the challenge for me, seeing what works and what doesn’t.

When it came to the quilting, I actually took some of the scraps from the quilt top and made a sample so I could mess around with quilting ideas.

You can see that I was experimenting with a hexagon sidewalk design, and I also played around a bit with thread color for the sidewalk. I didn’t want the sidewalk to stand out too much. In the end, I went with a rectangular sidewalk design using a brown thread. I quilted double lines so it would stand out enough to be seen. The brown thread also was used to represent the dirt on the sidewalk, etc.

The quilting in the mosaic is just random lines quilted throughout using an orange thread. I wanted the mosaic design to draw the attention rather than the quilting.

For the backing, I used this fabric from my stash. I thought it fit the theme well.

The finished quilt measures 20 x 22 inches. This mosaic challenge was a fun way to wrap up the year for our group! You can see the other art challenge quilts at The Endeavourers.

Wendy