Branching Out Journal Quilt

April started with a new theme on the Sketchbook Challenge site i.e. branching out. And as I mentioned on earlier posts I'm using these themes not only to work in a sketchbook but also to make my Journal Quilts for the Contemporary Group of the Quilters' Guild here in the U.K.

Our size for the JQs this year is 10" square. So as soon as the theme was announced I got out my sketchbook and made a start as you can see underneath. I started with brainstorming, not just about branching out in the conventional sense of the words but also thinking about all the things I would love to branch out into.

While writing down this list my mind wandered off into fabrics that would be suitable to use on the Journal Quilt I was going to make in due course and that brought me up short remembering a beautiful Toile de Jouy fabric with trees. So I stopped writing, started searching through my stash and before I knew it was making a landscape background for that marvelous tree. I found a dog on the fabric as well and for no good reason, apart from the fact that I like him, added him to the mix. Two doves, yes they made a lovely diagonal running from the dog through the tree to the left hand corner.

One of the requirements for the first 4 Journal Quilts we're making this year was that they had to contain a circle, so the landscape received a sun. The flower shaped embellishments in the tree represent all the fruit I still want to pluck in my artistic life as I had written them down in the sketchbook. The text was the final addition. That was something I decided to add to all my JQs this year myself. It's good to set challenges for yourself in addition to those issued by others!