January's Challenges - Take it Further & Journal Quilts

I think I may have mentioned that I have signed up for Sharon B's "Take it Further" Challenge this year. It involves creating a piece (fibre or paper) on either of two options that Sharon presents each month. There is a requirement to blog about it as well of course!

So the January options are either the concept of admiration of a person (who, why, what) or a colour scheme. I have been thinking about both for the last week or so and I am finding it hard to focus on a single idea let alone a "resolved design"! I think the colour scheme is probably a bit too muted for me but then again the whole point is to challenge ourselves and the recycled book cover piece at the top of this post is pretty muted colour-wise and I loved doing that one...


Anyway I have promised myself that by tonight I will have fine-tuned the myriad ideas I have floating around and get started so that I have enough time to finish it by the end of the month, which seems to be rapidly approaching.

The other thing that I am pondering (as I continue my craft room clean-out) is my January Journal Quilt for Aus_NZ Quilters. This is my first ever journal quilt (A4) size so I am looking forward to participating in this challenge as well, although I am glad this one does not have the same requirements regarding participation (if you don't get it done you can still participate the next month!).

The January theme is Seasons and I am pretty sure I am going to do a variation on a small art quilt I did last year for an exchange (picture below) - the theme was elements and I enjoyed representing fire, water, air and earth in fabric and I think the fours seasons will work well done in a similar way. I'll just use a sun as the central point. The journal quilts also have a series of techniques that you can use each month and January includes embellishment so that is another reason to keep the quilt design simple.

I'll post some progress shots soon (I hope).

(And to finish here is one of my pages from a colour based journal
from a few years back - just because I love green!)