Take It Further - January (An Update)

You may recall in this earlier post I decided to go with the colour scheme Sharon posted as the TIF January challenge. Well, in the course of pondering what do with said colour scheme, I decided to think about qualities I admire in other people (given that someone we admire is the TIF concept for January). I toyed with various ideas and then "balance" was issued as a journal prompt on another group I have joined and I immediately knew that I wanted to use that as my theme for TIF! I am so in awe of people who have balance in their lives.

Over a decade ago I had the wonderful opportunity, through my job, to do a very intensive live-in week long Leadership Course at the Mt Eliza Business School over in Victoria. It was a life-changing event for me in many ways but one of the points that was stressed during the course (which was totally male except for two female participants, myself included) was the importance of balance. The course used the quadrant approach - family, work, personal life and community and I have kept that in mind ever since. Needless to say I have not always achieved it...

So, my TIF colour scheme has turned into a small art quilt based around the concept (quality?) of balance. I have used four equal squares as my quilt top and then I have divided two of the squares into length-wise strips (to symbolise the different areas in which we participate in our personal and community lives). I am adding a circle in the middle to represent the perfect balance between all four (and potentially the snowball effect!). I had already selected the fabrics before the thinking happened but I think they are ideal for this - there is a mixture of western and Asian text and design which emphasizes making the most of all approaches and philosophies. As an embellishment I will add a large Asian decorative coin that represents all the signs of the Chinese zodiac - a good representation, I think, of life in balance - all the personalities that we need to balance in our lives!! Not sure how much quilting etc I'll do although I really think it would look nice with some beading. The darker purple fabric (not pictured) from the colour scheme will be used for the quilt binding.

These are a couple of progress shots from my scanner (partial shots only, and of course minus the binding which isn't done yet!)


And because a blog post needs pictures, the other scans are of a green journal title page (below - a great way to use up all those scraps of beautiful papers) and a journal cover (at the top of this post) that I made some time ago.