It is time to hand over all my items for the first exchange with our row robin challenge group and it has been an interesting journey. Normally I wouldn’t of joined a piecing group because this is a leap of faith for me. I don’t see my strong suit as a piece together person. In fact a lot of my quilts are planned out and painted on large pieces of fabric because then I don’t have to piece as much. Perfectly matched anything is a challenge because really I like the end result more than the process. One of my goals this year is to stretch myself as a art quilter. What a better way then to exchange with seven other quilters and paint a row for each one without knowing what their theme ahead of time. So here I am now committed to this row exchange challenge. At the very first meeting with the group I asked all the ladies if it would be okay if some of their rows were hand painted and thank goodness they were all pretty excited about that. Anyway yesterday at a sewing meeting one of the row robin group ladies, Joan Anderson was working on her row. She is the one who had the idea for this project and her row is beautiful and all hand appliqued. Her theme is sunbonnet sue. My first thought was “Oh my gosh what can I paint for that theme”. I had to calm myself down and concentrated on how exciting it is going to be to get a new row each month and share in other peoples creativity. It is suppose to get me over my insecurities. Ha Ha…So included in this post is my hand painted row and the fabric choices to go with it. My painted row theme is “It’s a quilters life”. I painted a pictorial art quilt scene with fields of quilts and a barn for mega fabric storage, thus the barn quilt on the front. Then Salli at Back Porch Fabric helped me pick out most of the other fabric to be used each month. They are all neatly packed in a purple tote with the instructions on top with a list of who we exchange with each month inside the lid. All ready to go. Will keep you posted to how it is going and maybe even some painted rows pictures….Karen