Do You Need An Idea For An Art Party?

     Do you sometimes run out of ideas for group activities? I wanted to have an art party at my house and this idea popped into my head. 

Everyone will started with an identical piece of fabric  10 x 10 with the same line or a mark on it. (That I provided.) 

cotton with felt underneath and line drawn with a marker

I put a box in the center of the table with threads and other objects in it. The other guests brought things to contribute to the box.

These are the directions I sent out ahead of time:

1.) Each person changes one thing on their piece of fabric by taking something from the box and adding to their fabric.

2.) They pass their fabric to the person on their right.

3.) Each person changes one thing on their piece of fabric by taking something from the box and adding to their fabric. Or by adding something of their own accord that they brought.

4.) They pass their fabric to the person on their right.

5.) Each person changes one thing on their piece of fabric by taking something from the box and adding to their fabric. Or by adding something of their own accord.

On it goes until we declare it finished. Each takes one home.

Sometime in there, we'll break for lunch.

What to bring:

Items to put into the box that would be good to add to the fabrics to make for fun compositions.

Items to not add to the box that you might want to use for yourself on the fabrics.

Scissors, sewing needles.

Things I had in the box: buttons, found objects, fabric scraps, Inktense pencils, markers. Off to the side I had a container of water for the Inktense pencils, a paintbrush, and a huge container of embroidery floss.

There were 6 of us and we spent about 10 minutes on each step. Sometimes I forgot to look at the clock and we spent longer. By the time the cloths came back around to the original person, we were hungry so we called it finished. It was interesting that some people rotated them as as they went around. At the end we put them in a bag and randomly chose one from the bag to take home. Then we enjoyed a nice lunch. Here are the results.

Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

Sample 4

Sample 5

Sample 6

     Now I have no idea which side is up on any of them except for Sample 2 with the bird and cat. I think all of them are pretty impressive especially since we worked quickly. One of the members already took hers home and did more work on it and is sewing a fabric edge around the four sides and is planning to hang it. We liked it so much that we may propose to do it with our art group ArtsEtc., also.
     I even dressed up my Xian warrior for the event.

in the entrance hallway

     So if you need another group activity, this is one that can be done in a little over an hour if everything is set up ahead of time. It worked well for a group of six.  I think it could work for up to nine people. If you have more than that, you might want to split up into smaller groups. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find more art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.