March Journal Quilt - At Last!

At the start of this year I planned to participate in two monthly projects for myself for 2008 - the first was Sharon's "Take It Further" Challenge and the second was the Australian-NZ Quilter's Journal Quilts. I managed to do the first five months of TIF before dropping out but I am still going with the journal quilts even though I am way behind schedule. The beauty is that it doesn't impact on anyone as these are for myself!

Anyway, today I have finally finished my March quilt which I first talked about here. I have been working on it in small bursts but it took ages as it is all hand sewn apart from the binding. The theme for March was "memories" and as I have many strong childhood memories of my mother and grandmother sewing and of my delight in Mum's spare buttons I wanted to make a quilt that was based on those memories.

The white and cream background is made up of small torn and cut pieces of various fabrics laid over a piece of muslin-covered felt and covered with a layer of white polka dot tulle. The "rustic" hand-stitching anchors the layers together, the buttons have been stitched on and lace has been added around the edges. The binding is a fine zig zag stitch (fabric postcard style). The buttons are in a heart shape to represent the love I felt as a child as well as my love of buttons!! My quilt was inspired (and influenced) by this which I happened to see on a web-surfing spree at the time I was contemplating the theme.

I was making progress with my April quilt (the "theme" was the technique of using painted vliesofix) but I wrecked that one last weekend when I tried to finish it, so it is back to the drawing board for April!