Volvox Tertius Escapes to the Garden — and wins a prize!

Last night the Edmonton & District Quilt Guild held their wind-up banquet. Good food, fun and lots of laughter. Several people made mo-jo dolls that were used as a fund-raiser. Honors went to former executive and welcomes to new. 

The annual challenge competition was also a highlight. Seventy-five Kaffe Fassett fat quarters went out, forty-eight 12" square quilts came back. Each must contain 25% of the challenge fabric. They were exhibited last weekend at the show (held every two years) and wow, what a display. No one quilt looked like any other, even at the same size and using that mustard-colored flower fabric. 

The prizes were awarded last night.I'm so excited because my little effort won Judge's Choice! How can that be? The others were so good and so creative. A nice surprise and a nice ribbon! Very encouraging too.

I had to edit this for the "artist's statement" but here is what this one is about: 

Volvox is one of the most beautiful microscopical sights known. Those who study such tiny wonders have claimed that “nothing compares to the grandeur of a perfect specimen with daughter colonies inside, free-swimming in pond water.” As these cells develop these new colonies, the parent eventually bursts and the daughter colonies evert, escaping to grow into their own expression of being a lovely orb in the pond.

Even though Millifiore looks like the blown glass of the same name, I could not help but notice that this Kaffe Fassett fabric looks much like Volvox. Did he see these tiny, 1000-celled globular algae and decide to change the form to floral? The possibility motivated me to mimic the shape and activity of the Volvox Tertius. My imagination saw it beginning to reproduce itself. Then, as it gazed at the garden around its home, it suddenly decided it was tired of living in ponds and going unnoticed. It was tired of surrounding flowers basking in everyone’s attention. So why not become one with them? So the microscopic cell simply burst with new life and escaped to the garden. It took on the appearance of the flora and began to send out daughter colonies to the envy of all the garden plants who now are unable to eclipse its dazzling beauty.