Exploring Collaboration - BYOC

 

These bimonthly posts with Karen Bolan exploring collaboration have been challenging and fun! Today we are both sharing something exciting that we've been working on for a long time - BYOC! 

You might be wondering exactly what those initials stand for. Blue yams on cake? Buy yarn on clearance? haha nope. It's Build Your Own Collaboration!

Maybe you are familiar with restaurant menus presented this way. Some places have a build your own pizza.... choose a crust (gluten free for me please), choose a sauce (I'll have the marinara) choose a topping (mushrooms and black olives anyone?) and a cheese (always mozzarella for me!). Or build your own sandwich (bread, meats, veggies, dressing, sides), or build your own bowl (I'm going with brown rice, grilled shrimp, all the veggies and gluten free teriyaki sauce). Is everybody hungry now? Yeah, me too.

Anyways, Karen and I got to thinking, what if there was a menu to help you plan your collaborations? And BYOC was born. We even created a BYOC bookmark for all of you! If you are attending Quiltcon this week, find one of us and we will happily give you one. 

Not going to Quiltcon? No worries! We've made a pdf printable you can access from home. Find that here. 

The menu is tried and true! We used it to plan our Welcoming Lamp quilt back in the fall, and we are using it again for our Mushroom project. Does its include everything? No, that would be impossible. In fact that could fill a book. Some things it does not address include Building your Collaboration Team, and Setting deadlines. Topics it does include? Great question.

What is the Purpose of your project? Is it a charity quilt or a quilt for a cause? Is it to educate people? Build Community? A gift or for exhibition? Maybe more than one of these things? You can always check more than one box, it's your project after all!

What is your Source of inspiration? Will it be a topical quilt? Maybe inspired by a photo or another art source. Could be a traditional block or pattern.

What is the Contribution type? Will each member contribute blocks? Maybe your quilt will be done in a series or round robin style. Will you split the labor (one person pieces ,someone else quilts, another person binds) or will it be non pieced art or individual projects that link together somehow? 

Where will you Source your fabric? Will group members work from their stash? Swap frabric? Purchase specifically for the project? Or maybe a combination of these things.

Lastly, how will you Finish your quilt? Will group members piece individually or as a group? will you pay a longarm quilter? Or maybe one of the group members will volunteer to do the quilting. A group quilting bee would be a fun option!

We hope you'll print out our BYOC menu or grab a bookmark from us at Quiltcon and use it to get to Collaborating!