Quilting and other Things

My journal quilt is base on an Inuksuk. You can see more about Inuksuk in the video at http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10210 The end of this film says that the Inuksuk tells people we were here. The background was first painted with watercolour pastels then highlighted with pencil crayons. A bear and elk are quilted into the background. The outlines of both animals are taken from photos I took in the spring in Banff National park. During my trip to Alberta this summer, the wild flowers were in full bloom. Not only did they make the field on my way to work beautiful, they smelled wonderful. Thanks to the sea grass in one of the journal quilts, I knew how to quilt fields of grass. Beads were added to be the flowers. My Inuksuk and its reflection are made of photos I have taken in the last two years printed either on cotton or organza fused with misty fuse. The photos (from top to bottom) are: My cat “helping” to machine quilt; white peacock at Leeds Castle UK; pine tree ...

January: I picked up a copy of the McCall’s Special Issue Quilting with the Pros. The workshop by Libby Lehman inspired the thread painting in the old English H of this journal. I also started reading the book The Illuminator by Brenda Rickman Vantrease which inspired simple embellishment of the H. I think another time, I leave out the scrolls and work more with the leaves, butterflies and maybe some flowers. A little more sketching of the design before hand would have been useful. February: We haven’t had much snow this year however one Saturday we did get some. It started to melt then got very cold. All the trees and bushes shimmered with ice. This journal is an attempt to capture some of the feeling of that day. There is Angelina fibres, thread painting, tule and crystals. March: I’ve been taking a class through QuiltUniversity.com with Marilyn Belford called Realistic Fabric Portraits. This months journal has a lot of the rejected pieces from the portrait I’m working on...

Last year, and this year, I participated in the Journal Quilts project. Last week my 2005 Journals came home. The photos of those aren't posted yet so while I'm waiting to be able to post the 2006 Journals I thought I'd post the 2005 journals. January: The first one was a "whole cloth" journal. The sketch was doodled over a series of daily meetings until I found what I liked. Then I started to quilt. I didn’t actually transfer the drawing to the fabric. Just kept the paper near the machine and used it as a reference. Variegated purple rayon thread was used to stitch the outline of the vase and the flowers – I accidentally started to quilt a leaf but then the thread broke. Probably the first time I’ve been happy the thread broke as I hadn’t really meant to quilt the leaves. Next was the brown silk thread to do the scribbles at the bottom to represent the table top. Then white silk thread to do all the tiny, tiny stippling around the vase – The fingers hardly move...