Q & A

Questions & Answers

What is CQJP? It is a personal challenge… all about expanding your creative self while producing a major crazy quilt project within a specific 12-month time-frame. The vision is to make this an annual challenge to promote crazy quilting by inspiring our self and others through publication of our individual twelve month crazy journeys. Everyone completing one of the annual challenges...will also have their work published on the Main CQJP Blog Site.

Why are there annual challenges? Having an annual challenge helps promote crazy quilting continuously. Each year, participants will be encouraged to "start anew" and work on more or different projects. However, is a participant is planning a project with more than twelve blocks...it can be "stretched" over multiple annual challenges.

Who can participate? Anyone that is willing to commit the time, energy, talent, and desire to create 12 individual blocks over a one-year period. We welcome stitchers from across the globe.

Is there an overall vision? Yes, we hope to grow an interest in the techniques and art of crazy quilting. We hope that participants will be motivated to enter their final project in local display and contest venues so others might see their work. We hope to enlist non-stitchers into the creative world of crazy quilting by their being inspired and encouraged by participants finished projects. We hope to have some participants show their work at the national and international levels.

Do the finished blocks have to be put into a quilt? No, but we hope that they are. The participant can choose to create individual art journal pages with their blocks, instead of the more traditional quilt style display. However, we believe that journal pages would have a more minimal impact on promoting crazy quilting than a consolidated project might.

Can we see other participant’s blogs? Yes, although it not necessary to have an individual blog to registar for the Challenge. The Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2013 blog will include a list of all participants in the sidebar of the blog. The list will be shown as "Participants With Blogs" and "Participants Without Blogs". .

Are the blocks judged each month? No, the blocks are your own challenge. Only you can judge when they are perfect.

What are the guidelines for participating? Everyone must complete a registration and follow the Project Rules.

How do we submit our finished blocks? Blocks are not submitted, only photos of your finished blocks.

Does the CQJP have a website? We did have, but it was cumbersome and costly to maintain. Therefore, we are in the process of moving those permanent entries to a Home blog for CQJP. This blog will house all of the participants work that have COMPLETED within any of the annual challenges. Since, the 2012 Challenge was the first year...we hope to get the CQJP Blog all completed by February of 2013. Then, afterwards, then when each annual challenge is finished...new entries will be added for that challenge year to the Home blog by the end of February following the challenge year. Each individual year will continue to have their own, individual blog for all participants...whether they finish the challenge or not.

Why do you need our address and phone? Will that info be shared? We anticipated the need for address and phone information in the first challenge...2012 CQJP. However, at the end of the challenge...none of that data was used. So, for subsequent challenges...we are not asking for this information. 

What is different about the 2013 Challenge and the 2012 Challenge? Well, not much that can be seen by the individual participant...just some minor adjustments to make things better.

--The challenge block size and the need to complete 12 during the year remains the same.

--We did find that trying to maintain a website was horribly time-consuming and the costs did not warrant that site being used in lieu of a free blog site. So, all of the website information is being moved to a blog site instead, and the old website will eventually be deleted.

--There was little "work" to be done by the committee or the Honorary Chairperson. So, while they were all willing to do anything needed...we won't be establishing either of these as a routine practice. If they are needed in the future, we will re-visit the idea at that time.

--The Blog for the 2012 participants was difficult to maneuver for individuals to locate their own photos. This was due to a decision early on in the year "Not" to put tags of participant's names on the posts. A bad decision. It was made because we initially thought that the website would serve this purpose more easily. However, the more we added to the website...the slower the response time became...and the longer it took to get anything added. We tried to get better service from the webmaster but, that change would come at a higher monthly cost...and all the existing data would need to be transferred to a different server...which would require hundreds of hours of work. So, instead, we "began" posting participants names as tags on the blog to help folks search for their own blocks. Even this was not a perfect solution...because there was over 600 posts already in place...without these tags...and it became impossible to catch up. We still want to go back and correct the 2012 data on the blog...but it has to be as time allows us to do so. A great lesson learned! Therefore...for the 2013 (and future challenges) we will be adding tags to each entry with that participant's name so that they can sort and find their own blocks.