This amazing textile is actually the back of a quilt by Lauren Venell, but it could just as easily be the front. Venell’s fabric is dark blue denim, with light grey quilting thread to show the quilting design in contrast, and she pieced and quilted the whole thing by hand on the sewing machine. As you can see it’s a geometric abstract representation of mountains, lake and shore, with beautiful quasi-Japanese reflections, and I’ve been staring at it in a sort of trance. The quilt is one of the submissions to a sewing challenge by Craft Magazine. The theme is “Sewing with Nature” and it can be interpreted broadly. If you’re interested in entering, you can upload a photo of your submission to Craft Mag’s contest Flickr pool. I really like Craft Mag—or craftzine.com as it’s known in its online version—for its excellent tutorials and its hipness.