Poem Challenge Completed

I am a member of an on-line Yahoo group called 6500 Challenge. It's called that because all of the members own a Janome 6500 or 6600 Sewing Machine. A challenge was put out during the summer to use one of the member's poems as inspiration for a quilt. Here is the poem and a little history about the quilt.

My inspiration poem was FRUSTRATION by Jacqui Sciutto

The piece of fabric I am seeking
Is nowhere to be found.
I had it just a week ago
And now it’s not around.
I looked in the box
Where it usually stays
And the places where it might be.
I even looked in unlikely spots
Hoping that fabric to see.
With the time I have wasted
I could be all done with the block I needed it for,
But the gods of mischance
Aren’t making it easy—I’ll just have to go and buy more!

I purchased a fabric quilt kit that had French countryside scenery. The design is by Linda Crone Creations and is called “Florals of Provence”.
My husband and I took a bike trip to the Dordogne and Lot River Valley of France in the Fall of 1999. There were 17 couples on the trip—each couple was riding a tandem bike. The scenic countryside of this most beautiful part of France was difficult to portray on a quilt, but I gave it my best try. This is where the poem comes in. I wasn’t pleased when I finished the quilt top because I wanted to add pictures I had taken on the trip. I hadn’t figured out how to do that back in 2000, so I set it aside. When I finally learned how to do that, I couldn’t remember where I put that quilt top, but I made the picture transfers anyway. Then when I found the quilt top, I thought it needed to be fractured to add a little interest so I did that and then couldn’t find the pictures. So back on the shelf it went. Finally, last summer, it all came together, I found the quilt top, added the pictures and then decided to embellish as I was no longer in love with the fabric I used to fracture the top. So I added some beads, painted the rooftop with a medium that had sand in it and use my stencils and stamps on the brighter areas that needed to be toned down. Well, I’m still not in love with what I ended up with, but am happy because I have created an art quilt that has created three memories when I look at it—the wonderful bike trip in France, using embellishments and using it to create a Poem Challenge quilt for this 6500/6600 Janome group! Thanks Jacqui for helping me ‘finish’ this quilt. The quilt measures 22 ½ “W X 30”L.