Friday, May 01, 2009

New season's journal quilts . . .

These have uploaded in reverse order - April, March, February and January, but never mind! I've never done a JQ so fast, discovering at 5pm yesterday, with an evening out ahead of me, that the pix and some blurb about them had to be with the challenge organiser that day! Well, I did it, finished off the last one, and emailed everything off, with 10 minutes to spare. The local group, Infinity, that I belong to, makes a JQ every 2 months, picking a theme from ideas we have put in a box. I decided to do 2 per theme, thus having one a month for the Quilters' Guild Contemporary Quilt group challenge. March and April are Monuments, and I had great difficulty thinking of something. It even got me started mind-mapping, which I hadn't done before, so that was a good thing! The idea of gravestones and remembrance struck me, carved monumental lettering, and crosses in war cemeteries in Normandy came to mind. Then poppies of course. So, painted and printed calico, a fibre tip pen, free motion machine stitching, thick thread on the bobbin, came into use.
The first theme of the year was glass, and I have wanted to try windows for a while now. The 'glass' in them is 3 layers of organza (you have to have 3 layers in a quilt!). And I also wanted to try out the chain stitch effect on a finished piece, so a creeper is beginning to push out a few buds (this is for February after all).
Glass 1 is shards of broken glass, organza pieces bonded on with fusible web, and straight lines of machine quilting. Doesn't show up too well in the photo but the real thing catches the light interestingly.




No comments: