Journal Quilt 2009 October

This Journal Quilt is a lot later than normally but at least it has been finished before the end of the month. I've promised myself to get on with the last 2 this year more promptly and will probably work them in tandem to get them out of the way before the end of November.

The reason I'm so late is that I'm frantically trying to finish a quilt and that normally leads to feverish activity on the quilt but not much else being done on anything else. I really had to give myself a pep talk in order to temporarily let go of the quilt and producing the JQ instead. I also have to finish some Quotation ATCs tomorrow for a swap I'm hosting on the ATCsforAll Site but after that I will immediately be back in action on the quilt as it's so nearly finished and I want to see what it will look like once I hang it up!!

Anyway as most of you already know the JQs this year are sized 6 x 12" (either horizontally or vertically) and dedicated in my case to the Edwardian actress Marie Studholme for no other reason than that I think she really is lovely and I have a large collection of vintage postcards that feature her.

I used one of them for the JQ by scanning it in and printing it out onto a cotton lawn fabric sheet and cutting her out. The background is a piece of furnishing fabric that I machine quilted with one of the decorative stitches on my machine. I added an whole vintage glove to the background as the theme of the JQ was the text I also added. From a song (There is a girl I simply dote on) in the Lady Madcap musical, it reads: Not your frock, your hat, your glove. Marie was raw edge appliqued on and I then added some hand stitching in fine white sewing thread to hold her down on the surface. In the picture she was wearing some lovely jewellery so I made her a very long strand of pearls with a vintage button at the top. Pearls were also added to the glove and some large coffee coloured beads were sewn on as well at the top of the fingers. Finally I added a vintage lace at the right hand side of the piece.

The edges were finished with transparent ribbon as are all the Journal Quilts this year.