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!

Where I have been...

(ATC Trade received this week from Sephi Kemp - isn't it gorgeous!! Thanks Sephi!)

Well I didn't even get a chance to post that I was going to be away most of the week with work - sorry about that and thanks to all my visitors this week - when I got home I had a look at my statcounter and saw that since I installed the counter I have had 22,222 hits! I love that sort of fluke - it is like waking during the night and finding it is 2.22 on the digital clock. I never get upset that I have woken up when I see those sorts of numbers (not sure what that says about me though...)

Anyway for anyone outside of Western Australia that may not have much idea of our geography (and I personally am hopeless when it comes to anything detailed in another country!) this is a rough idea of where I have been this week - driving from Kalgoorlie up to a remote Aboriginal community about 40 minutes north of the little outback town of Meekatharra. All up about 800 kms away - because there has been so much rain we couldn't take any short cuts on dirt roads and had to stick to the bitumen where it was available (the road from Wiluna to Meekatharra is a "good" dirt road). The country was amazing - normally at this time of year the whole thing looks totally parched but all the rain we have had in the last couple of weeks meant that there was a lot more green and a lot of "lakes" everywhere! Came home to a very sodden garden and overfull swimming pool. I also came home to that great ATC from Sephi Kemp.

As a result of being away I haven't had much creative time but I have managed to finish my fairy slippers for Joanna (I'll post a picture in my next post as I will have to take a photo rather than a scan) and made good progress couching fibres onto my February "Colour" Journal Quilt - progress shot below showing a strip of the quilt. I am really enjoying working with all the bright colour and simplicity of design.
I have also been experimenting a bit more with the paper bag technique - I had some leftover diluted gold fabric paint from my fairy slippers so I rubbed it all over a piece of the leathery walnut ink paper and then squirted it all with pesto color wash. It has come up a whole lot less leathery looking but lovely and golden looking. Think I'll make a couple more postcards with it. (The red bits are from the Brumby brand paper bags I tore up to make the paper).

I have been reading Sherrill Kahn's book which I have borrowed from my friend Annie - great book full of great ideas for embellishments even if you wouldn't be seen dead wearing some of the resulting "jewellery" - or perhaps it is just me, but I think a lot of the embellishments look best on quilts, books and wall hangings. Too many fibrous chunky things hanging around a neck always look to me like fibrous chunky things!