monkeying around with a paint chip challenge

At our August meeting of the McKinney Modern Quilt Guild I issued a paint chip challenge. I had gone to Walmart and helped myself to a large selection of free paint color sample cards. Even though they are free, I kept expecting some pimply faced employee to yell at me! I'm sure I looked so guilty glancing around the hardware department in total fear of getting caught! I took the samples home, cut the colors apart, put them in a paper bag, and shook them up. At the meeting each gal chose 3 random colors from the bag. These ladies love a challenge! Every single one of them played along with very little shaming and coercing. Some of them got lovely color selections. Some, not so much. I was less than thrilled with my colors....

 Not my usual palette for sure! But alas, I had issued the challenge and I would come up with SOMETHING, right? I stewed about if for a while. Came up with a couple of ideas but wasn't thrilled with them. Spent an evening pouring through some of my quilt books and came up with this idea (from the Love to Sew Mug Rugs book).....

kind of silly but I like him! my first go at straight stitch raw applique (done on the machine). Not perfect but ok. kind of sketchy like a kid drew it with a pencil....

I can't wait to see what everyone else does. Some of these gals are so clever, I know there will be some full sized quilts and many ORIGINAL designs (not pathetically copied from a book. sigh). And, undoubtedly, most will be a much larger size than my silly little monkey, but hey, he's done!