October Journal Quilt

Had a busy few weeks with many things getting in the way of me creating and keeping up to date!

I did manage to get my October Journal Quilt made but somehow never got around to posting about it so now is my chance to do so.

October meant that I had reached the blue/violet section on the colour wheel so for this I decided to do a log cabin that had a chequered effect.  I didn't really think it through to0 much so although I can promise you that the construction was very much a log cabin, the end result doesn't really look like it!

I free machine quilted the flower design using stitch and tear as I was frightened of not having an all over pattern.  It worked very well until I had to remove the paper and found that at the centres of the flowers the stitching was too dense to completely remove it.  Great learning curve for me and thank goodness it was on something that I don't plan to exhibit!

Only two more JQs to go for this year which has already got me thinking about what to do next year .....

Journal Quilt - Green and Blue

For the August Journal Quilt, I used green and blue fabrics from my stash of hand dyed fabrics.   Some I printed on the gelli plate using a stencil which had some text.   It was one of those occasions when one print was enough - the colours and the print looked so good I was reluctant to do further prints in case it was ruined.

For the log cabin part, I started with a Courthouse Steps design which had a larger than normal centre as I then cut the finished panel into four, rearranged the pieces so the centres were in the corners and then reassembled them.

The centre 'cross', which was the gelli printed fabric, was machine quilted along with 'in the ditch' for the other rounds.   For a change I bound each edge separately so I could have different colours.

I know it doesn't show in the photo, but the sizing of this quilt went horribly wrong!   I started by drawing it out on paper, cutting it up to see what it looked like and to help with the colour placing.  I then diligently added all the seam allowances, including those needed for the reassembling, but somehow or other it did not work out!    I managed to tweak it as far as I could but the long side is more 8.1/2" instead of 9".   Never mind, if at any stage they go for exhibition, I won't include this one which after all has been said, is one of my favourites this year.

Journal Quilt for May

I've now reached Yellow on my journey around the colour wheel so I decided as it was one colour I would do a 'whole cloth' quilt and print it after quilting.

I started with a piece of yellow fabric which I had in my dyed stash and quilted it as a traditional log cabin.   Once complete, I gelli printed it using a wooden block in a leaf design.  I use two shades of yellow fabric paint but as the quilt still looked a bit plain, I also added some prints using the same block.

For the binding, I used some more of the yellow fabric which had been printed in the same was as the quilt.

Another month, another Journal Quilt

For my April Journal Quilt I reached orange and yellow on the colour wheel and although on the face of it there is a traditional look to it, I used a variety of widths for the strips and included some orange and yellow striped strips too.  The centre square is also from the striped fabric.

I used a hand made block for the gelli printing on some of the yellow strips, using string wrapped around a piece of card and using an orange fabric paint.

To finish I machine quilted in straight lines from top to bottom, again varying the distances between the lines to reflect the different widths of the strips.

March JQ

Moving on to Orange for my March Journal Quilt, this log cabin is more or less formal but with each colour only used on three sides.   Once again I used my own dyed fabric in various shades of orange, some printed with a Gelli plate using a map stencil. The results of this month's gelli-printing were better and using less of the fabric paint seemed to make a difference.  

The finished quilt was   machine quilted in a spiral pattern, working diagonally across each strip, and then bound with some of the map-printed fabric.

February JQ

For my February Journal Quilt I continued my journey around the colour wheel, moving from red to red and orange.  It's not strictly on the wheel but a combination of two colours suits my plan for this year rather than the accepted red-orange.

I started with a piece of the same red fabric I used in January, placing it on the corner slightly to one side and used different width strips in a combination of plain orange and red fabric as well as some orange fabric I printed with red fabric paint using bubble wrap on a gelli plate.  I also put in some extra folded strips of red for accent.

It's the quilting of the finished block that always gets me stumped and this was no exception.  In the end I opted for quilting in the ditch on each strip as well as free machine quilting in a bubble pattern on the plain orange strips using an orange, red and yellow variegated thread.

The finished quilt was then bound with some fabric that had also been printed with the bubble wrap.

Once again I found the second print was better than the first but I think this is because I was putting too much paint on the gelli plate - this must be a difference between fabric paint and the acrylic paint I normally use - so next time I will be more sparing with the paint.

Another Year of Journal Quilts

I have again signed up for making a monthly Journal Quilt with Contemporary Quilters.  This year it has to be  7" x 9" landscape which I think is a lovely size to work with - not too big and not too small.

I have decided my quilts are going to be based on a log cabin block, hoping to push the boundaries a bit which I know for me is going to be a challenge as I love the formality of a traditional log cabin!  I'm also going to use my own dyed fabric which I will overprint using my gelli plate, again using new ideas as I go.  And finally I will be using the colour wheel as my palette, using each of the primary and secondary colours and then a combination of primary/secondary in between.

So starting in January I used a red palette and a more traditional block to start. The gelli printing wasn't as successful as I had hoped and found less is more in some cases.  I did a bit of foiling over the top to give it a bit of interest as it looked a bit flat. The piece of fabric I printed for the binding was more successful which considering this was just using up what was left on the gelli plate, maybe this is telling me something for next time.

Good starting point but looking forward to the next one.

December Journal Quilt

I mentioned last month that I was struggling with ideas for the final quilt of this year but fortunately the light bulb moment came and I managed to get the remaining idea into fabric.

The inspiration came from a tree we frequently passed which seemed to have hessian type fibres where the leaves had been trimmed off.

I think it was the fibres that I liked and where the leaves had been cut off, I thought the shapes would relate well in to patchwork.

It did take me a time to get my head around it, mainly because time was short and I wanted something that was not too complicated and took too long.

I settle in the end on using zig-zag strips on which I turned the hems.  The zig-zag meant I could quilt diamond shapes to reflect the cut edges on the tree.  I used some dyed fabric I had in my stash -I can't remember where I got it from but it is not one of my own.   The hessian that I laid in between the rows is a bit more uniform than I wanted but yet again, I love the messy, uneven look of things but somehow when I recreate them, I have to go to the neat and tide option!

I've really enjoyed creating this year's collection of quilts as it has made me take an idea and use a variety of ways of interpreting the source.    Some have proved more successful than others.  Some I love and some I don't.

I'm looking forward to next year's challenge and already have ideas mulling around in my head.

November Journal Quilt

This month's Journal Quilt was inspired yet again by cactus.

I started by curved piecing the background using my own dyed fabric.   Yellow spines were then bonded in rows and these were machine quilted, again in rows.

Sounds simple but there were many trials getting the size of the spines right!

The next and final quilt for the year is still undecided.   I have used up all the ideas I had in January with the exception of one that I just can't seem to get from my brain to fabric.  I'm trying to come up with an idea that combines all the designs and colours of the other eleven quilts but again nothing has so far come to fruition.

Beach Huts quilted panel

For my next quilted squares panel I turned to beach huts for inspiration as they are something I've become rather fond of since our move to the coast and see on many of our walks.

One particular place is along Avon Beach where there are many huts in a variety of blue shades so they inspired this panel.

My original plan was to use photographs of the huts but I just couldn't seem to get the colour right.  I really must work with Photoshop more so I can really make the most of it!  I also felt that the photos didn't add enough to the overall look to spend too much time on so I went for using fabric.

Luckily I had a good stash of blue fabric in the shades that I wanted.  As before, I used fabric that I had dyed myself.

Once the fabric was all pieced I quilted around the beach huts as well as lines to show the wooden panelling the doors are made from. 

 I wanted to quilt the lower part of the panel and as I'd noticed that many of the beach huts had names, on one of our walks I recorded all the names that I thought were fitting. These were machine quilted in wave-like lines using white thread to represent white waves. To emphasised the shape I machine quilted in blue variegated thread. 

The quilted fabric was then stretched over a canvas frame.

August Journal Quilt

Working ahead of myself on this year's Journal Quilts although I've nearly caught myself up so I'd better get working on the rest!

This month's quilt has once again been inspired by the Hibiscus flower.   This time I paper pieced the flower using a pentagon shape as Hibiscus have five petals.   The flowers were then applied and stitched to the background which was a piece of my own dyed fabric.   I machined stitched the centres of each flower and machine quilted the background with more pentagon shapes and stems of leaves.

 

      

   

Hopefully this will give a contemporary interpretation to English Paper Piecing.

Rust Panel

My first piece of "new work" is finished and mounted and I have to admit I am very pleased with it.

You may recall from a post last month that I have decided to work on a series of square panels inspired by a variety of sources.   This is the first one which started from the piece created as an experiment using rusting powder. 

I used a variety of different fabrics including some I dyed myself as well as commercial batiks.  Once pieced, I free machine quilted in lines inspired by the original rusted metal that was the starting point for my rust series completed a few years ago.   I deliberately left some areas so that I could fill them with stitches and beads in a similar way to the RUST panel.  I also straight stitched some of the lines created by the quilting.

The finished panel was then stretched and mounted on an artist board.

  

  

  

A new way forward

It's been a busy month with lots of projects on the go at once, all at different stages and none finished!

Added to that, we still spend half our time away from home and the wifi is a bit patchy and as I work from an IPad while we're there, I find posting with blogger more difficult than it is using a laptop.

There has been  much deliberation this month over which direction I wanted to go. I have for some years just dabbled with whatever takes my fancy, often trying out new ideas and techniques that I have seen other people do.  I'll still continue to do this as it is my way of learning what I like and what I don't like.  This was the main reason I signed up for Workshop on the Web and have found it very interesting and useful.  Alongside this I will continue with the Journal Quilts with Contemporary Quilts, using a variety of techniques. The main change is I am also going to develop pieces in what I hope will become my 'style'.

Over the past few years, when I was exhibiting with Thread and Shutter, I always include a patchwork piece made from small squares using dyed fabric and including photos.  The works included pieces based on rust, tulips and icebergs.

   

    

I'm going to start by keeping them smaller and hopefully will develop them as I go, incorporating different elements and techniques.

To start, I am using the "RUST" piece I shared in my previous post and will incorporate it in a small quilt that I will mount on a canvas frame.   At the moment I have cut all the squares from a variety of fabrics including my own dyed, commercial batik and some fabric that I used the same rusting powder on.  They are all ready pinned together waiting to be sewn together.

I will report back once the piece is all together and I get a chance to see how I am going to quilt and embellish it.

October and November JQs

Just a little bit behind on my Journal Quilts but managed to catch up so I now only have December to get done.

October was inspired by the colours of Autumn, always my favourite time of year as I just love the reds, rusts and golden brown colours that appear around us.   I used my own dyed fabric and strip-pieced the background, simple but effective!   The leaf stitched on top has the words of John Keat's Ode to Autumn, a favourite poem of mine since school days.  The machine quilting echoes the shape of the leaf.

As with previous quilts, I have bound the edges with the same fabric and stitched beads on the seam.  I bought some beads at Ally Pally this year to use on this quilt and they were stitched on the top and bottom edges.

 

  

 

 

For November it had to be fireworks - not that I'm a huge fan but it seems everyone who lives around us is!

I started by foiling a piece of my own dyed blue fabric.   I used some powdered glue that I have had for years and only just started to use.  As the foil only adheres to the particles, the result is much more speckled than be achieved using something like bondaweb.    I used some different colours to represent stars and sparks from the fireworks.

I then free machine embroidered firework bursts, adding some 'firework' words to finish.

Yet again I bound the quilt and stitched beads on the seam.

 

 

    

 

Glacier River

For each Thread and Shutter exhibition I always like to create some pieces of work that are directly inspired by Brian's photographs.  Luckily he travels to some exotic places and as one of his more recent holidays was to Iceland, I used two photos on Jokulsarlon, a glacial river he visited.

 

The first piece was a felted panel for which I used wool and silk fibres, Angelina fibres, silk and cotton scrim.   I needlefelted the various materials together into a sheet of felt and hand stitches were then added, along with beads an sequins.

The panel was then stitched to a hand dyed cotton background which had been machine quilted with icicle shards.

 

 

    

 

The second creation is a quilted wall hanging  which uses the actual photos.   These were printed on to cotton fabric to form two larger panels within the quilt as well as smaller patches throughout alongside my own dyed and printed cotton fabric.  

Icicle crystals were then machine quilted and further ice shards were also quilted before finishing with foil, beads and sequins.