"She was nothing of the kind."

That's the first line of The World According to Garp and it's for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge group I'm a member of. Once a month, we're issued a challenge with a theme and an element of art to use to complete a piece within one week. This month, it was to take the first or last line of a favorite book to use as inspiration and incorporate the element of contrast. I had a lot of fun with this one and needed the stark colors and graphic look of it to clear my head from working on the batik piece. Well, a lot of fun other than the fact that for some unknown reason I decided it needed microscopic stipple quilting on it. I wouldn't have minded it so much except for the fact that white on white is terribly hard to see. The final effect is what I was looking for though so it's all good. It also felt good to actually finish something for a change. And again, I completely forgot to put the sleeve on it, but my corners look good! Fortunately, I've left the sleeves off often enough that I've devised an invisible way to add them after the fact.

My friend in Illinois gave me an update on his painted piece we're collaborating on too, and he has the fabric gessoed and was shooting for laying in the background colors last night. The design is incredibly cool looking and I can't wait to get my hands on it to begin work. If the timing works out right, I may have it available to display at the artist invitational thing this spring. He's also done some beautiful hand drawings that I'm going to use for the next piece (or second next if I do the draw-down quilt first) in line to be worked on. And in the midst of doing my own stuff, I have one more OPS quilt to finish.

Today is our 23 wedding anniversary. Time flies.