July Journal Quilt

Another in my series of Venice Journal Quilts has been completed for this month. Remember I am doing these for the Journal Quilts Project organized by the Contemporary Quilt Group of the British Quilters' Guild and the size this year is 12 x 12". Mine are all dedicated to Venice, a place very close to my heart. In fact, should I ever win the lottery, I'll be off to buy a holiday apartment there in one of the old palaces along one of the canals. I know the place is slowly sinking but what a beautiful place to go down in!!

For this month I concentrated on the (in)famous Carnivale di Venezia, which takes place in February. I'm not really paying much attention to what month it is when making these JQs, just selecting themes and working with the one I fancy. During the Carnivale people go around dressed in costume and mask and get up to all kinds as they hope no-one will recognize them.

I bought 2 vintage postcards on Ebay quite some time ago at a rather extravagant price but oh, they were so worth it. For the centre of this JQ I scanned them into my computer and then made a digital collage using details of both. This collage was printed out onto cotton fabric, sized 8 x 8. That was layered with white felt and hand stitched and beaded.

I used a green furnishing fabric as background which was machine quilted. The above made collage was appliqued on with gold zigzag stitching. Gold transparent ribbon was added and that was adorned with a decorative machine stitch, also in gold. After adding the binding, gold size 10 seed beads were hand stitched around the centre collage as well as the edges of the binding. Finally I sewed on 4 buttons as shown. These are made from Czech glass and also have a lot of gold as well as a pattern which reminded me of Venice. The city of decoration, par excellence!