June Journal Quilt and June Calendar Page

I almost forgot to upload this month's Journal Quilt for the Contemporary Group of the British Quilting Guild but I remembered just in time. This quilt was actually made early and was finished in May which was why I sort of lost sight of it. I made my usual fabric collage with June as the theme, using text from an old book of days about the origin of the name of the month and its significant events. I also added vintage images which to me seemed to fit the month well. I overlaid all this with blue and white Toile de Jouy napkins, again suitable to June with its Summer Solstice. By the way there is actual snow in the Scottish Highlands today so maybe the book of days did not have Scotland in mind!!

I scanned the resulting fabric collage into my computer and printed it out again on a cotton fabric sheet. I selected rectangles out of this that I particularly liked and appliqued these (using satin stitch) onto a blue velvet background which I had quilted with a decorative machine stitch.

The Journal Quilt was bordered with dark blue silk. I beaded around the rectangles and the binding and added an actual piece with June written on it in the centre of the piece and beaded this as well.

By a happy coincidence I had signed up to make a calendar page for the 2008 Paperwhimsy calenday, organized by Peggy Gatto. I was assigned June by her so I now set to and used the actual fabric collage for this purpose. I made the background from a blue/cream checked fabric (from Cabbage Patch fabrics down the road), layered it with batting (wadding) and quilted it along the lines and then added the fabric collage on top with zigzag stitching. I added the girl (a fabric image from Paperwhimsy and also the transparency sun (also Paperwhimsy) by straight stitching. I added seed stitching by hand in a variegated blue thread, added heishis and beads around the sun and also a butterfly (Top Hat Design) as shown. I beaded around the June collage with yellow/cream size 11 seed beads.

Finally I layered the entire piece on a watercolour backgrond and zigzag stitched with gold thread around all the edges.