Cherrywood Challenge | NW Quilted Cat

Each year, Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics creates a special bundle of fabric for a themed quilt challenge. The rules are pretty simple: use only the fabrics in the special bundle to create a 20-inch by 20-inch art quilt in the designated theme.

This year, the theme was Storytime, evoking nostalgic feelings of reading your favorite childhood book. The bundle had 8 fabrics with an optional 4 fabrics add-on. You can still purchase the fabric bundles on the Cherrywood website, although the challenge is closed.

I received a wonderful email earlier this week letting me know that I was a challenge finalist and my quilt would become part of the traveling exhibit! There were 420 entries received, but only 225 quilts were selected as finalists. These 225 quilts were then split into 3 traveling exhibits, and my quilt is in the Fable exhibit.

These quilts will travel to various quilt shows, festivals, and events throughout 2026 and 2027 so keep an eye out for them!

For my quilt, I wanted to do a theme honoring childhood stories combined with camping and campfire stories. Aha! That’s what I could name my quilt: Campfire Stories! I envisioned a scene with kids sitting near a campfire, reading stories, telling ghost stories, and dreaming up great adventures.

I drew the pattern with pencil and paper and started assembling the components:

Individual elements for my Storytime Challenge quilt

Background and imaginative cloud shapes for my Storytime Challenge quilt

I worked on the background and foreground elements separately. Once I had the background and the fantastical cloud shapes, I quilted them down on my domestic Bernina sewing machine.

Next, I added the foreground shapes, quilted those down, and started to add details.

Free motion quilting on my domestic Bernina sewing machine

Can you find all the fun details in the quilt?

Completed “Campfire Stories” quilt for the Cherrywood Storytime Challenge, 2026

I really enjoyed this challenge, and I’m so grateful that my quilt was accepted as a finalist. I hope to see it in person at a quilt show sometime this year. In the meantime, get ready! Cherrywood Fabrics has announced the next challenge and the theme is Jane Goodall, with rich greens and warm neutrals.

Happy quilting!

-Jen

This past year, I entered a quilt into the annual Cherrywood Challenge for the first time. Cherrywood makes beautiful and unique hand dyed fabrics with a suede-like appearance. Each year, they sponsor a challenge where contestants can submit 20-inch by 20-inch quilts in a specific theme using a limited palette of Cherrywood fabrics.

For 2018, the challenge theme was Prince. The Prince Challenge fabric bundle contained 3 purples and 1 black. While we could use other Cherrywood colors as accents, our quilts had to “read” as purple. We could also use embellishments to enhance our quilts.

For my entry, I wanted to feature Prince and his wonderful performance at the Superbowl. In particular, I wanted to highlight the song “Purple Rain” because it was such a stunning moment for him and the audience.

Here’s a look at my completed quilt with a ruler to show the judges the 20-inch size:

Prince Cherrywood Challenge Completed Quilt

I used holographic thread for the swirly quilting in the black background. In person, the thread has a beautiful shimmery look to it. The black background also has little beads with silver metallic threads to represent the camera flashes from the stadium audience. I used a purple Razzle Dazzle thread to give a hint of the “purple” rain during the performance.

For the purple background, I used metallic thread in the straight-line quilting. I used the thread to accent the guitar, guitar strap, and to add music notes.

The Prince symbol represents the stage while Prince faces the crowd in a decorated purple jacket.

Here are some close-up pictures:

There were 388 submitted quilts for the Prince challenge. Out of those 388 quilts, there were 165 finalists.

My quilt made it as a finalist! It is now traveling the country to various quilt shows as part of the Prince Live Tour. I will get to visit the show in person in 2019 when it travels to 2 quilt shows near me: the Clark County Quilt Show in March and the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show in July. Cherrywood will likely have book signing events at each of these shows, and I hope to be one of the artists signing books.

Here’s a look at the Prince Cherrywood Challenge book: