Taking up the challenge(s)

Well, I think I am back amongst the living. Actually, I have been out of bed since early Wednesday morning, simply because it felt like I couldn't lie down any longer, not because I felt like I was on the upswing yet.
But the snows were melting, and already I had missed two days after returning from the workshop, without having set up a bit more of snow dyeing. And who knows whether there is going to be more snow this year? So as unfit as I was I dragged myself out to the nearby parking lot with a wheelbarrow and lugged some snow in to add a few more pieces to the stash. I had to make sure to do this after my son had already left for school, in order not to let him see this act of stupidity that his mother would have told him off for had he done it. And my husband wasn't really pleased with this kind of activity either...
Actually, after I finish this, I will go down to the basement and check on these pieces, as I haven't been down there again yet.

I thought this early part of the year would be quiet. How come I always manage to convince myself that there will be phases like that? The workshop with Lisa Call is keeping me busy, I am finishing pieces for the International Threads exhibition in Prague - and I have decided to get serious about those Journal Quilts of the contemporary group of QGBI. For the entire time that I have been a member I have been considering joining in, but never actually done it. This year they announced the new format of 6 x 12 inches, and you have to decide whether you want to do it in portrait or landscape orientation. At first I signed up for portrait, but virtually in the last minute (closing date is tomorrow) changed my mind and altered my registration  to landscape. I don't do a whole lot of quilts in landscape orientation, so I thought this might be more of a learning experience. Now all I have to do is figure out how to upload the images. Once I get started on actually producing something.
I am also part of a group "ArtFrauen" which has regular challenges as well, and I hope that I can double up on some of all these. Not because I am lazy, but  there are only 24 hours in the day, and when you can't even go at half speed, like I was forced to this week, you just need to figure out how to make things work twice if possible.
For example, I finished the little quilt I was hinting at here, and it served twice for the challenge "Blue" in the ArtFrauen group, and the Extra-Challenge for International Threads in Prague.

Shapes 26

I used reflector fabric in this one,
here is a picture taken with a flash.

It also served once in homework for Lisa Call's class as example of abstraction, so I guess it has really done duty by now! And it will be the newest piece on display in my upcoming exhibition, opening in eleven days. (For which I have to send out invitations - oh, I am sooo behind with things!)

I am also working on a slighter larger interpretation of this for the Australian challenge "True Blue". I've been meaning to enter in that show since I first heard about it at Ste. Marie-aux-Mines last September. But only a couple of weeks ago did I start - deadline is end of the month - who knows whether I will make it...? Challenges indeed. I did not manage to make one for SAQA's "Balancing Act", though. Although I had told myself I would enter at least two or three SAQA shows this year. Well, I hope there will be at least two others that are appealing.