IMQG March 2012 Challenge

You know, there are some people who give the impression of being rule-breakers? But on closer inspection, you find they have not really broken any? Skirted around it a bit maybe or maybe even bent it a wee bit, but break a rule? No ma'am. More often than not, its just a case of finding new and creative interpretations of stiff rules. Most often than not, these people will be Aquarians! Like me :-). We like rules. We also like chaos. But most of all, we like order in our chaos..method in our madness..rules in our explorations.

I digress.

The rules for the India Modern Quilt Guild's March 2012 Challenge :
1.Make anything out of ONLY 2 Fat Quarters, one solid, one print. (Of course you can use threads!)
2.Fasteners, buttons, buckles, if used, should be for purpose, not decoration.

Stiff, right? As a true-blue Aquarian, my first thought is...Boring!! Second thought...Need to stick to the rules and yet tweak them a bit. How? By choosing fabric that will go further and beyond the call of duty of being just plain old boring solid/printed! So, the solid fabric has to be also textured, and, the printed fabric, a riot of colours !! :-)

Now that I have the fabric, I'm wondering what to make. I run around the house, clutching my fabric and  randomly trying to cover things up...the telephone, the keyboard, the ugly showpiece, the mutilated chairback, the commode, the this, the that. And then I cover up the horrible plastic water dispenser in the kitchen.. and the March Challenge entry just swims before my eyes !

Those of you familiar with Chennai will know that though we have the great big ocean at our toetips, water is a scarce commodity. We use 3 kinds of water..1.Salt/hard water, which is the ground water and is used in the toilets..2.Good water, which we buy by the tanker and use for bathing and washing..3.Drinking water, which we buy in cans and use for cooking and drinking. And the cans are ugly! Perfect !!

The plain fabric is just a few inches short of wrapping the entire can, so I insert 4 strips of the printed fabric. The top has to be printed too. Its just half an hour's work and I am done and I am feeling let down. This was too simple :-(. Plus is not a quilted thingy.

Ask an Aquarian how to complicate life. 'With flowers' will be her reply. So I try out various flower shapes out of fabric. I experiment. (That sounds better than saying half the flowers turned out yuck and so I threw them away.) I decide to keep some. And the evil glint in the eye is back ! So I use buttons thru the middles to keep the flowers in place. Thats what buttons do, right? Keep things in place? See, no rule breaking !!

I wish I had complicated the hell out of this, but I decide to KISS.. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

So here's my entry for the IMQG March 2012 Challenge - Aquarius, the water bearer :-)

Somebody pleeease tell me it does NOT look like a water-can condom!

:-)