The blue doors

Sadly this building is being renovated and turned into apartments and the old blue doors have been replaced with black ones. These doors were the inspiration for one of my 52 journal quilts shown below, that was made in 2012 and exhibited in 2014 when this journal quilt was sold. The memory will live on, but it made me feel quite sad to see the doors go.

Circuit Board Journal Quilts

Every year Grosvenor Shows organizes a Journal Quilt Competition where every participant is asked to contribute 2 A4 sized Journal Quilts. For 2020 the theme is Connections. That made me think about the different way humans now communicate with each other compared to times gone by. Mostly people met in person in the past, then came letters and finally the phone. Now we all have a wide variety of computerised devices to keep in touch.  Whether you use a computer, laptop, tablet or phone they all use circuit boards to keep us connected! So they became my inspiration for the journal quilts. As I was using many stencils all by Stencilgirl® Products this also became my monthly July project as Guest Designer for them. That means you can find a step by step tutorial for this journal quilts on their Stencilgirl®Talk website. 

Circuit Board Journal Quilt 1

Circuit Board Journal Quilt 2

Detail of beading and bugle beads

Windows Journal Quilts

Hope everyone enjoys entering a New Year filled with art and creativity. If so, you’re in the right place as Stencilgirl®Talk is full of it every day of the year. I count myself very lucky to be back as monthly Guest Designer!

I’m starting off the year with a stitching project. I have been making journal quilts since 2004 and thought it was about time to share 2 with you here. Journal quilts are quite simply small quilts (usually A4 or American Letter size) that tell a story. Here in the UK Grosvenor Shows organize a yearly competition for Journal Quilts that travel with their shows to venues all over the country. Each year there is a new theme and for this year that theme is: Windows.

When I read about the theme I immediately thought of Stencilgirl®'s stencil L163 Window Ledger 9 and here are the results. You can read more about the process on the Stencilgirl®Talk website today.

The journal quilts themselves are with Grosvenor now and will be making their first appearance at the Spring Quilt Festivals and then at Quilt UK in Malvern later on.

Sweet Delight Journal Quilts

 I managed to get to the Spring Quilt Festival at Ingliston, near Edinburgh, yesterday. It was good to get out as cabin fever had started to set in being up on our hill in among the snow and ice. And it was lovely to see my Journal Quilts displayed. The theme of the exhibition of JQs this year was: Sweet Treats, and I was inspired by the words in William Blake's poem Auguries of Innocence that read: "Some are born to sweet delight".

 I had a lot of fun playing with my collection of beads and buttons, as well as sparkly embellishments and felt. The Journal Quilts (sized A4) looked quite sweet. In fact after viewing the entire exhibit I felt like eating an ice-cream!

I finally put to use some beads I bought probably more than 30 years ago in a stall on the beach in Weymouth on a trip we took my mother-in-law on. They had been carefully treasured (hoarded?!) but were just what I wanted for these little quilts. You can see them in the top row in the picture above. The flower trim in the bottom row above were obtained from Daytona Trims in New York during our trip there in 2016.

Don't fence me in

There has been no series of monthly Journal Quilts this year but nevertheless a few of them have been made. This is one of them, made for the upcoming (early 2018) exhibition of Thistle Quilters. We were all asked to make an A4 landscape orientated one for a specific week this year. My week was the one starting the 28th May. The theme was to be: News, and we could interpret that as we wished.

Truth be told I have been avoiding the "big" news as much as possible for the last few years, zapping away from any news programmes as if my life depended on it. Maybe because it had started to affect my mental well-being. So no world issues but instead I found my news much closer to home.

This year has been all about Flora, after she arrived with us in November last year (1st anniversary coming up soon!) so she had to feature. During that week of the 28th May I was participating in the Artful Adventures, Stroll through my Hood project (organized by Nathalie Kalbach) where we were to look at our neighbourhood with new eyes and take photographs based on prompts she gave us. One of the pictures I took at that time was of a very old gate in the Penicuik Estate. I have re-pictured it below although this one was taken yesterday.

I combined Flora with the gate and that formed the base of my journal quilt.

The quilt was made using a combination of hand dyed fabrics (the pink and the green) as well as a backing cloth that had been used to sop up the paint in my studio (the gate). Flora herself is an image transfer from a photograph.

The quilt was machine quilted, raw edge appliquéd with hand stitching and embroidery. It has been further embellished with size 11 seed beads and sparkly sequins.

Let's dance

Here are my two dance related Journal Quilts hanging at the quilt show at Ingliston near Edinburgh. The light conditions weren't ideal for photography!

So here are pictures I had taken before sending these 2 A4 sized pieces to the competition. First off there is Dance to the Music of Time:

And underneath: The Last Dance:

Both were inspired by a quotation from Goethe that reads: " True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful". That link for me is dancing. I made a spread in my art journal last February, and that was the springboard for these journal quilts.

These pieces were done on a background of loose silk fabric snippets and threads, that was covered with a chiffon scarf and then machine and hand stitched. Figures are in silk and were seed stitched, before being machine appliquéd onto the background and embellished with beads and sequins. All the embellishments were acquired during my trip to New York last year so they bring back many happy memories.

Dance Journal Quilts

I was despairing of finding anything to photograph on this dismal weather day till I picked up the recent issue of British Patchwork & Quilting magazine and discovered my two dance inspired journal quilts. They were Runners-Up in the dance themed JQ competition organised by Grosvenor Shows. Hopefully I will be able to pictured the actual pieces next weekend when they will be at the quilt show at Ingliston near Edinburgh

December Journal Quilt

Just like that we have reached the last month of the year and thus also the last journal quilt for 2016. I've made these 8 x 10" journal quilts for the challenge on the Contemporary Quilt Group. The Group set the size and also told us to add a piece of orange at least 1/2" square to the piece this month. I set myself the task of using tweeds and tartans for these JQs, coming mainly from Lochcarron Woollen Mill and Fabric Affair.

This makes the pieces look quite traditional but instead of techniques such as piecing I have used raw edge appliqué with hand stitching to merge the individual pieces together. All the journal quilts this year were hand quilted, raw edged appliquéd with hand stitching and hand beaded with size 11 seed beads. This piece has been embellished  further with vintage buttons.

The binding came from a piece of ShweShwe fabric obtained from the African Fabric Shop. I have so enjoyed finding just the right such fabric for every monthly journal quilt.

This was the 12th year of Journal Quilt making for me and I haven't made any decisions yet about next year. The challenge will run again on the Contemporary Quilt Group but the details haven't been revealed yet. On the one hand I love making these little pieces but on the other hand it adds another task to my already filled to the brim months. I guess it depends on whether or not I suddenly get a great idea once the challenge is posted. You will have to wait and see.

November Journal Quilt

This is the penultimate journal quilt for this year. All the JQs are sized 8 x 10 for the challenge on the Contemporary Quilt Group and the group also set the requirement that each journal quilt has to contain a coloured piece of fabric at least 1/2" square. For November the colour of this piece was orange.

I made the choice to use tartans and tweeds for my journal quilts this year and to give them a folksy, handmade look. This has proved harder to achieve than I had originally anticipated but I'm getting better at it. Sadly there is now only one month left to go!

Most of the fabrics I used came from the Lochcarron Woollen Mill and from Fabric Affair. Needless to say that over the course of the year I have acquired so many tartans and tweeds that I could easily make another 12 journal quilts, but I'm sure they will come in handy sometime in the future.

This piece was hand quilted, raw edge appliquéd with hand stitching, hand beaded with size 11 seed beads and further embellished with vintage buttons, some of them wooden ones. The binding comes from a piece of ShweShwe fabric bought from the African Fabric Shop

October Journal Quilt

I'm making these small (8 x 10") journal quilts for the challenge on the Contemporary Quilt Group. They set the size and also the requirement to have a small (1/2" square) piece of a specific colour on our pieces. For the last 4 months of this year that colour is orange. Perhaps that is what inspired the autumnal look of this quilt.

 I set myself the challenge to use tartans and tweeds on my pieces, coming mainly from the Lochcarron Woollen Mill in Selkirk as well as from Fabric Affair.

I used unconventional raw edge appliqué with hand stitching to make the pieces adhere and almost melt into each other. All the journal quilts I make this year have a folksy look about them which was harder to achieve than I imagined. There is a lot of hand stitching as well as beading with size 11 seed beads and embellishing with vintage buttons. The binding is done using ShweShwe fabric from the African Fabric Shop.

August Journal Quilt

A new month brings with it a new journal quilt sized 8 x 10" made for the challenge on the Contemporary Quilt Group. Their requirement was to add a green square to the JQs this month and you can see it underneath. 

I'm using tweed and tartan for my Journal Quilts this year and in the background of this piece is a tartan fabric I bought many, many years ago (I think about 25) in Inverary. I have been hoarding it carefully all these years and now for the first time I have managed to persuade myself to cut a bit off and use it!

The piece is hand quilted, raw edge appliqued with hand stitching, hand beaded and embellished with vintage buttons and also some buttons I fell in love with in New York at Daytona Trimmings in West 39th Street, a veritable treasure trove of loveliness. You can see one on the green piece above. 

It's a very woolly piece and feels rather unsuitable for this summer month when for once the sun is actually shining!

July Journal Quilt

July already! And time for the next Journal Quilt. I'm making these for the challenge on the Contemporary Quilt Group who set the size this year as 8 x 10". They also wanted a square of at least 1/2" of a particular colour to appear on the journal quilts and for this month that square had to be green.

I set myself the challenge of using tweeds and tartans in my work and to used hand stitching for everything apart from the binding. So this is hand quilted, raw edge appliquéd using hand stitching and hand embellished with beads and vintage buttons.

 The idea is to make them look folksy and wonky which is harder to achieve than I had anticipated.

The binding for each quilt is made from an African fabric. They are different each month but come from the same fabric collection of Shweshwe Quilting Fabric available from the African Fabric Shop.

May Journal Quilt

 A new month means a new Journal Quilt. I'm making these monthly for the challenge on the Contemporary Quilt Group who have set the size at 8 x 10" and also require us to add a piece at least 1/2" large in a specified colour. For the next 4 months that colour is green (and you can see it bottom left.

I have added a further challenge to myself  i.e. to use tartans and tweeds in my journal quilts this year. The background is hand quilted and the pieces of tweed have been appliquéd on, simply by hand stitching. I'm trying to merge them into the background that way.  As you can see there are 3 layers of appliqué, one on top of each other. Although the fabrics I'm using might be traditional the methods are not and there are lots of raw edges adding to the texture of the journal quilts. I'm also trying to make them look folksy which is proving more difficult that I had anticipated.

 Some of the fabrics I'm using come from LochCarron Woollen Mills. 

Lots of embellishment form the final layer of the piece in the form of size 11 seed beads and vintage buttons.

April Journal Quilt

During my absence a new month began and that means it's time to show you my April Journal Quilt sized 8 x 10". The size was set by the Contemporary Quilt Group for their journal quilt challenge. The requirement is also that we add a purple patch to the first 4 JQs this year, this being the last one. You can see it middle row on the right, and also elsewhere.

I'm using tweed and tartan fabrics for all my journal quilts this year (most from LochCarron Woollen Mill in Selkirk), which are temperamental to work with but give the finished piece a lovely soft feel. There are raw edges but they are hold down with lots of hand quilting.

And of course I have added lots of beads as well as vintage buttons. I have replenished my bead supply in New York which is reassuring to know! I even managed to pick up some beautiful buttons.