Fiber Challenges Past
Denim, Denim, Denim...
The year I hosted this challenge, I had featured a lot of "denim inspired" yarns for knitters that summer season. So after the clearance sale, I combined the leftover ones (some bulky, some sport, some textured and others smooth) with some fibers (silk and locks) in orange since I had used the color wheel to decide on the "complement" range of colors (those across the wheel from each other) as the "challenge".
Most of the yarns were cotton and some were made from recycled jeans, others were just dyed in a range of blues and some had lots of texture. So you can see that the challenge was both a color challenge (not many people are comfortable working with orange and blue, or complements in general!), as well as a challenge because of the differing gauges and types of yarn.
Some participants chose as their 1 "add" warp to weave the yarns into. Others chose buttons, aluminum from a Chock Full of Nuts can, beads, etc.
You can see from the range of designs that participants can felt, weave, knit and make any range of items from garments to wall hangings to dolls and pillows!
I haven't included photos of every single participant because of time formatting and not having organized them all neatly so there are others that I don't have on this jump drive but on another and I don't have time to track them all down....but you get the idea.
The "online" challenge...
This year I opened the "challenge" up to participants in the wider community across the country! It was a lot of work gathering the photos of everyone's final piece, cropping them and uploading them to the website so everyone could see, and I missed the in person "reveal" party which is very fun. But it was amazing to get so many more participants involved that year.
The challenge this year was a "split complement" as seen in the color wheel left. The next photo shows the pile of yarns/fibers that everyone got and the third photo shows the "zingers" I then threw into the mix just to add to the challenge (everyone got one of the pinks, not all three!).
Again, I couldn't upload all the amazing pieces that participants did, but enough to shoe you the idea that anything goes - from using the packet as needle felted embellishments on a black skirt, to knitted embellishments on a felted black hat. From dolls to garmnets....its really up to the participant what they do with the yarns in the challenge.
Fiber Challenge Unplugged
This year I put together a strange range of yarn colors and textures (using the color wheel again) but added another dimension. It was the year following the big collapse in interest of "novelty" yarns - you remember those: the furry, fluffy, wispy, doo-dad covered, pailette dangling , over the top yarns that everyone was knitting on US 15 in garter stitch for several years!!!
I had a bunch of those leftover and after giving all participants their "kit" of yarns, I let them each pick 2 of the novelty yarns from the table that they wanted to incorporate into their design. So they had a choice of color and texture. that they wanted to work with!
Then....in a twist that left some of them reeling....I gathered them in a circle with 1 of the novelty yarns in each hand and they exchanged the balls in their left hands with their neighbor to the left and similarly with the right ball. So everyone ended up with 2 different novelty yarns in their mix, but each was chosen by a different participant!
Again, the the rule was they could add one "item" to their "kit" to help bring it together, but they had to use every yarn and fiber in their kit somewhere.
I'm in search of the jump drive with this year's photos....so check back!