Temptation Journal Quilt

A new month means a new theme for the Sketchbook Challenge and also for my next Journal Quilt which I'm making for the Contemporary Group of the Quilters' Guild as well as for that Challenge. The JQs this year are sized 10 x 10" and here is my thought process for this one, now named Temptation JQ.

As soon as I read the new theme: Can't resist it, on the Sketchbook Challenge site I knew it would be both an easy and a difficult one. Easy because the list of things I can't resist is virtually endless but that is also what made it difficult. How to get all that into a small JQ? Here is just a small glimpse of what I can't resist: espresso coffee, fabrics, threads, beads, flowers, red wine, chips, art, dogs, cats, chickens, in fact almost animal under the sun, butterflies, vintage postcards, teacups, Paris, Italy, Venice, romance, sunflowers, cupcakes, sitting on terraces, the sun and then of course there are books. Old books, new books, it makes no difference, I love them all. Books are for me the most irressitable thing on this earth. I will read almost anything and it worries me no end that my life won't be long enough to read all the books, magazines etc. that are out there, specially as new ones are published on an almost daily basis.

But how to translate all that into a piece of work? I sat down with my big box of paper napkins and extracted as many images as I could find of the items on my Can't Resist List. To represent the book element I used as my background a piece of fabric with vintage lettering and made a collage (seen above) on that fabric with the napkin images and thinned down PVA glue. The resulting collage was then scanned into the computer and printed out on silk fabric.

It was machine appliqued onto a machine quilted background using the same lettered fabric. By this time I had definitely realized that there is hardly anything I can't resist so the quotation by Oscar Wilde: "I can resist everything except Temptation" seemed very appropriate. It was printed out onto fabric using my new toy, the Xyron Design Runner. Finally I couldn't resist (pun very much intended!) adding beads and embellishments to the Journal Quilt.