My Monet-inspired Guild Challenge

I've got Monet in a bag. No, it's not like, "Prince Albert in a can..." it's my quilt guild's—the Choo Choo Quilters—Brown Bag Challenge for this year. 

Fabrics for my Brown Bag Challenge and the Brown Bag Journal.

At this month's guild meeting, 11 participants turned in a "nucleus" for a round robin quilt project in a brown grocery bag. We'll be rotating the bags among participants and working on each other's projects for the next several months. An accompanying Brown Bag Challenge Journal will travel with each bag for contributors to write a few notes or thoughts. The big reveal will be in November when the bags are returned to the original owner and we'll see how fellow guild members were inspired by the bag's contents and what they created using the materials they found... or added to the mix.

Here's the note I put on the inside cover of my Journal:

A Tribute to Monet 

The inspiration for this project is the panels depicting paintings by Claude Monet [1840 – 1926]. Monet was part of a new art movement that emerged in the 1860s in Paris, France—Impressionism. This painting style is characterized by short, visible brush strokes that were quickly applied to capture the essence of a subject rather than specific contours and details.

Many younger artists of the period, including Monet, used a lighter and brighter color palette. They worked spontaneously—often en plein air [outdoors]—to capture the transient light and reflecting colors. Impressionist painters painted familiar, everyday scenes and abandoned the “conventional” art techniques of the time. The critics originally scorned their unfinished-looking and unkempt style, and intended the “Impressionist” label to be derogatory. The artists, however, took the criticism as a badge of honor and established independent exhibits that eventually brought them deserved recognition.