15. Lead to Nothing Journal Quilt

Sorry I'm a day late with my 15th Journal Quilt but this was due to my 500th blip celebration yesterday.

This Journal Quilt has also been the subject of one of the most shocking occurrences of synchronicity I've experienced so far. It seems to happen to me quite a bit but never before to this extent. It left me a bit stunned! I've been very pleasantly surprised which how the new theme on the Sketchbook Challenge site tuned in with some of my favourite subjects but this time I was actually in the process of finishing a JQ on the new theme announced on the 1st April. The theme was OPEN! This JQ was inspired by a detail on the door of Kirkurd Church which I photographed last year during our visit there. I used a hand painted fabric (made last summer) and appliqued the lock and opening onto it after printing those details onto a denim fabric sheet (from Crafty Computer Paper). I then hand stitched (and quilted at the same time) the background using a wide variety of hand painted threads. I added the rusty key (a great buy at an antique fair at some time, I knew it would come in handy!) and then added the vintage text which reads: shall it lead to nothing?

To finish I turned the backing fabric to the front, stitched it down using a decorative machine stitch and hand beaded. The whole quilt is a very simply concept but so far it's one of my own favourites!

The other bit of amazing synchronicity concerned Kirkurd graveyard itself. After posting about my visit there I had an e-mail from a nearby concerned resident who informed me that the church itself had been sold and that there were problems with the graveyard too. And what do you know, at the very same time I was working on this Journal Quilt the Scotland on Sunday newspaper of April 8th had a large article about how sewage is seeping into part of the graveyard from a previously disused pipe put back into use by a new resident of a nearby house. As a result burials have been suspended by the council and they have now appointed a soil specialist to further investigate. How sad that this has happened to such a lovely and picturesque graveyard! And how amazing that all this publicity came just when I was working on this JQ. Spooky doesn't quite cover it!

Here is the church door from Kirkurd Church on which you may be able to just see where the lock is located. The church is now in private hands and I wouldn't have the courage to go and photograph it so I'm very pleased I had the chance to do so last year when we visited the graveyard. It's very sad to hear and read what has happened to this church and graveyard since we were there. But at least I have managed to make 2 Journal Quilts so far inspired by this place (no. 2 and now this one, no. 15). I do hope that the council will take measures to prevent any more damage to the graves and rectifies the problem so that people can be buried there again in the future.

And by the way so far all the contributions I have made for the themes on the Sketchbook Challenge site have been sized 10" square whereas this JQ is A4 size, so it's my plan to make another one of the Open theme and will hopefully share that one with you here next week.