Who is that little Gem?

I've finished a small A4 Journal Quilt which will form part of a tombola during the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, 20 - 23 August 2009. This tombola is part of the fund-raising activities for the new home of the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles in St. Anthony's Hall, York.

I was asked to make one as a "well-known" quilter and had a long hard think about what to do for this JQ. I wanted to make it personal and also to showcase a technique which I'm know for.

In the end I used a reverse seam background from a quilt which never made it past the pieced top stage, cut it to size, layered it with wadding (batting) and machine quilted it. My liking for vintage was added to the mix as I then added the vintage glove (gift from my mother) and appliqued this on top using a transparent thread on my machine. On top of this again, I added the photo, printed onto cotton fabric, surrounded it with gold size 11 seed beads and the 3 vintage buttons. Buttons were also added at the end of all the fingers. I added the binding to tone in with the glove and stitched around the edges of the binding with size 11 gold seed beads. I have used this technique on all my JQs so it seemed appropriate to use it for this one too.

Then all of a sudden the title Who is that little Gem? came to me. At first I wanted to add the text on the front but I did not like that so now it's on the label on the back and it became the title for the piece, rather cheekily I must admit. Why you may ask? Well I've added the actual photo above and the woman in the picture is my mother so guess who the little baby (gem???) is?

You can also see my little gem quilt on the special blog site that has been made for all the little gem contributions here. Everyone can contribute, you don't have to be a member of the Quilters' Guild. All information about how to go about it and what these contributions are actually for can be found on the homepage