Walking with Giants

 Today on the Endeavourers Challenge blog we are revealing our responses to this quarter's Challenge - Patterns in Nature. Now, given that I proposed this particular challenge you would think that I would find it really easy to come up with a quilt to fit the theme, wouldn't you? Alas, no that was not the case, I dithered for ages over what to make. 

Then one day this photo popped up on my screen. The photo was taken a few years ago when we visited Northern Ireland and Donegal and went to see the Giant's Causeway. The site was very busy when we visited so it was almost impossible to get a photo of the basalt columns without several dozen tourists clambering all over them, so I was very pleased with myself when I managed to get this photo of just the columns. I had been thinking of plants, leaves, flowers, etc., for my Challenge quilt but realised when I saw the photo that these hexagon shaped columns would be ideal for the Patterns in Nature theme. 

 

I gathered together my supplies, quilting cotton for the basalt columns from the Cottage Cloth collection by Renee Nanneman for Andover Fabric, Linen/Cotton mix shirt for the background and Linen for the treescape. The linen and linen mix fabrics are a nod to the Linen industry in Northern Ireland, which prospered not far from the Causeway itself.

With the aid of some hoarded hexagon templates and papers I was able to create a range of paper-pieced columns to replicate the Causeway. 

So, here is my finished Challenge quilt - Walking with Giants. 

Once I had worked out how I was going to interpret the theme I enjoyed putting it all together, but one of these days I am going to surprise myself and not leave it all to the last minute :)

If you want to see how my fellow Endeavourers responded to the Challenge head on over to have a look here.