Journal Quilt 2009 November

Despite planning to tackle the JQ this month as early as possible it has taken me till now to finally make it, although the idea had been finalized in my mind at the beginning of the month.

I have just started another large quilt and was rather carried away by my piecing. A sort of frenzy seems to overtake me once I start and I do have to tell myself to go a bit slower at times as otherwise I would be at it day and night.So it was hard to put that aside for the time being to start work on my Journal Quilt but all the advance thinking paid off in that I only had to search for the necessary materials to make it into a reality.

As I'm sure you all know by now the Journal Quilts this year are sized 6 x 12" (either horizontally or vertically), are made for the Contemporary Group of the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles, and mine are all dedicated to the Edwardian music hall artist Marie Studholme.

Ebay is still tempting me with more vintage cards featuring her, that are not in my possession yet and I've used a recent acquisition for this JQ. It shows Marie with another of her marvelous hats in a circular shape and I digitally altered her from black/white into purple. This was to tone her in with the fabric paper background I had made for her (and also used for the Napkin ATC swap shown in an earlier post recently). I printed her out on an organza fabric sheet (from Crafty Computer Paper) so that you can see the background vaguely through the image. She was added using Bondaweb (Wonderunder in U.S.) and also zig-zag stitched on and beaded around the edges. This collage was then stitched onto the previously machine quilted background (using a furnishing fabric) and added beaded around the edges. The finishing touches were one large vintage button, 8 smaller purple buttons and the text : "be my intended" at the top, with beading around the edges.

All the JQs this year are finished with transparent ribbon around the edges, this month it was purple, and I will put them all together into one large quilt when they're all done!