Vancouver Modern Quilt Challenge - Mod Mosaic

First of all, most of the pictures in this post are from the amazing Sonja at artisania.

At the January meeting of the VMQG, I showed off the two pillows I made for Hisayo.  She's been waiting patiently for months for me to finally get these done.

DSC_0260, a photo by sonjaartisania on Flickr.

The first one was really fiddly to make as I cut 2 inch strips, put one inch strips of yellow on either side, then lopped the top and bottom at an angle, sewed yellow strips on the bottom, then squared them up at an angle so they were all tippy.  The end product sort of looked like bamboo as there were lots of joints and sections.
The matching pillow - but different pattern -  is from Oh Fransson!'s tutorial for the Mod Mosaic Floor Pillow. 

DSC_0104, a photo by sonjaartisania on Flickr.

It's a great technique for loosening up and improvising, so I worked it up as the challenge for the VMQG. Our VP Louise had donated a huge bag of fabric she had cut for a quilt that she hadn't put together, so I thought it was a perfect use for all her great red and black fabric.

Here's what came back over the next 2 months!  Wow!

DSC_0540, a photo by sonjaartisania on Flickr.

I took them all home and have put them together.  It reminds me of what might be the street plan for the old town of Zanzibar.  I recall wondering around for ever trying to find the guest house and feeling really lucky each time I did find it. 

These are my pictures now (you can tell by the abysmal quality I'm not in the same league as Sonja).

 

It's all sandwiched and pin based and ready to quilt.  I've got two weeks till the next guild meeting so there's not much time to decide how to quilt it.

 

The back was inspired by a couple extra blocks that were much different from the rest.  I made a bunch more blocks once I had a plan.  The bottom area is for the members of the VMQG to sign in so we have a roster of members for the year 2011.  Not everyone did a block, but I think everyone should sign it.

Here's a last picture to show how I put the back together.  I laid it out so it looked good, then I shifted the blocks a bit so I could get some big blocks with straight lines across the quilt.  That's the yellow lines.  The green dashed lines show the segments in each of the big blocks.