Eye and Heart Journal Quilt

On the 1st October the new theme was announced for the Sketchbook Challenge. It was: View. The first thing I did was look up the definition in my nearest Dictionary (dating from the 19th Century) and I was quite surprised by the number of definitions: act of seeing, that which is seen, pictorial representation, outlook and manner of looking at anything intellectually, are but a few of them.

But while I was working my way through all those descriptions and totally unexpectedly, the following saying came to mind: What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over. Where did it come from? In truth I have no idea why my subsconscious mind decided to send that to my active brain but I did listen. I thought about what it means. If you have never seen something you won't miss it when it's not there, is the nearest I came to.

Of course as a visual artist my eyes are my most important tool and the way I view the outside world has been trained over many years. So it seemed about time to honour my eyes for this View theme.

As I mentioned previously I'm combining the Sketchbook Challenge with the series of Journal Quilts I'm making this year for the Contemporary Group of the Quilters's Guild in the U.K. The size for those has to be 10" square. I started by making a collage of eye images torn from a wide variety of magazines and advertising leaflets (see picture above). I scanned this into my computer and started to play with the image using a program called Repligator (I have version 16)

I finally came up with the above effect (using Manga Rays). I proceeded to machine quilt a red velvet background, printed the image onto a silk fabric sheet, removed the backing paper and ironed on Bondaweb (Wonder-Under in US speak), and cut the image out (not an easy job with all those skinny points!), and then ironed it onto the background. I added the text (made using a Xyron Design Runner on white cotton) and added the heart button. It was a wooden heart but a Sharpie pen soon turned it black. Buttons are a required element for the last 4 JQs we make this year. The final touch was the beading.