Quilting Tennis - a collaboration with GnomeAngel

Today I am thrilled to share an exciting new project I'm embarking on with a wonderfully creative quilty friend. Many of you will know Angie of GnomeAngel fame. Angie has been one of my quilty crushes since I first stumbled upon her Instgram account more than two years ago. She's a wiz with colour and squeezing cute little fussy cuts into her work and her posts never cease to inspire me and make me smile. She is currently super busy running the Farmer's Wife QAL, writing a book and hosting the Colour Block Challenge on Instagram (go check out her beautifully styled images!)

I was lucky enough to meet Angie in person a couple times last year and it was a blast. Angie is friendly and witty and lots of fun to be around. Somewhere along the way as we chatted on Instagram we hit upon the idea of collaborating on something quilty, a just because project where we bounce ideas off each other and build on each other's work to create something fun. And so our quilting tennis match was born.

We are planning to make two medallion quilts - one each - consisting of a 20" starter block and five themed rounds. We both like bright fabrics and have stashes full of them so agreed on a general theme of "bright". After each round is added we will swap quilts, creating the medallion and two rounds of our own quilt and adding three rounds to the other person's quilt.

The themes we've chosen are (in no particular order):

• improv
• traditional
• foundation paper pieced
• black and white (with one other colour)
• mystery (chosen by the maker and different to the other rounds)

The order and width of the rounds is flexible but structured in a way that both quilts will have the same elements and finish at the same size. The flexible structure enables us to make choices about how to develop each round in reaction to the design elements of the round before and our interpretation of the theme. Quilts will be swapped every two months (three for the larger rounds at the end) and although we may post sneak peeks, the final reveal of each round will only happen after the quilts have been swapped.

We're both ridiculously excited about our project. I'm looking forward to the chance to be inspired as we work within set parameters and create in reaction to another person's work. And no doubt we'll have fun along the way!