Originally Posted by Phyldar

One year our guild-challenge-chairman handed each member a different magazine that had absolutely nothing to do with fabric or quilting (farm magazines, hunting, gardening, news related, etc.) and then had each one draw a number out of a "hat". The member then turned to the page in their magazine which matched the number they had drawn. The challenge was to make a quilted project that related to something on that page - it could be color related, based on a word or phrase on the page, based on a picture on the page, etc. When they submitted the challenge project, they also had to include the page from the magazine and a short writeup of how it related. I had a page with an ad for an artist which showed one of his paintings of a field in winter with an abandoned barn, guernsey cows, pine trees, and snow. I made a stuffed cow out of muslin and made small quilt blocks whose names corresponded to different things in the picture for the spots (trying to keep the fabrics "guernsey-spot" colored) such as "Hole in the Barn Door", "Pine Tree", "Snowflake", etc. It was really fun and we had some really unique interpretations. This year we each drew a letter of the alphabet (with the harder ones removed) and are challenged to make a small quilt that has three things beginning with our letter. One of the members has "M" and is making a baby quilt with cute monster material, sock monkey material, and melon material. Last year our challenge was "memories" - our interpretation. The year before it was "black and white and one bright". Hope this gives you some ideas - sorry it's so long!