Getting Ready

This has been the main focus for the past few days . . . getting things set up to do a live Zoom presentation on my Dumpster Diving series and my book for a Pennsylvania quilt guild on Monday the 8th.  

DH and I have spent quite a bit of time tweaking the temporary technology set up in my sewing studio to keep things as streamlined  as possible.

While he fiddled with wires and connections, I cut additional sashing strips and corner stones to simulate the final layout for DD12.  Twelve blocks are finished with eight more to go for the 4 wide x 5 long layout.

Seeing this much of the WIP quilt top on the design wall is really making me want to sit and stitch those final eight blocks next week.

I've also been doing prep work for my January journal (playing along with Meg's Journals "Junk Journal January" but doing things my way, of course).

When DH finished this particular Sudoku book,  I nabbed it before he could throw it away.

I used scraps of papers like this one (packing paper for something DIL brought home after her trip to Asia last year) to partially cover each of roughly 70 page sides (31 days in the month x 2 page sides each).

Even Ikea instruction sheets found their way into the mix.

I tried using a no sew method shared by Roben-Marie Smith but my packing tape was self-adhesive instead of her water activated variety and my final assembly didn't work out at all the way I had hoped (as in half the signatures failed to adhere to the spine).

So what you don't see here is my use of bright rainbow colored cording to tie each of the five signatures into the cover of this 1937 copy of Heidi in order to make my altered book journal functional.  

It's a bit wonky to be sure but somehow that fits with the "junk" (as in rescued) journal aspect of the month long challenge.

I left the torn edges on the pages when I took them out of the original book because they add so much textural interest.  And I used stick on letters to spell out each daily prompt on the left-hand page of each two--page spread.  

I've gone ahead and collaged my ideas onto the pages with prompts I knew how I wanted to handle.  

I'll spend the rest of the month filling in the others my own way after (maybe) watching the daily videos that are part of the collaborative challenge. 

Quiltdivajulie

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"Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide."

D.W. Winnicott