48. Rainbow's Cup Journal Quilt

This week's journal quilt came to be after my visit last week to the ZokuZoku exhibition in the Dovecot Studios. I loved all the pieces in the exhibition but one particularly attracted my attention as it was so quilt like and described a technique I was already familiar with. It was called Nuno Kasane.

This is what it said in the catalogue about the technique: "Kasane means layering in Japanese. An adaptation of the "chemical lace" technique invented in Germany in 1883, which involved stitching fabric onto sheer silk that was then dissolved in a lye solution. We now use a water soluble base fabric". 

Than sounded like something I could do. In the piece shown they had used remnants from their factory and in the spirit of recycling I too decided to use remnants. In my case they came from a sample furnishing catalogue I had purchased for 50 pence at one of the Thistle Quilters meetings. They came from the Zoffany Ltd. Bay Trellis range  The exhibition piece used triangular shapes but I decided to use my favourite circles and partly overlapped them. 

They were laid onto a very glittery transparent fabric (referring back to the many glittering pieces also in the exhibition) and Avalon water soluble was laid both under and over this sandwich. I also hooped it all and then free motion embroidered pebbles patterns all over, using a variegated thread in the machine. Above you can see this with the water-soluble still in place.  This piece was rinsed under running water until the Avalon had dissolved completely.

The resulting piece was cut into strips following the Fibonacci sequence (1,1 2 and 3") and laid on top of black felt and machine appliqued with the same variegated thread. Beads were sewn on (of course!) and rows of hand stitching were also added as well as the vintage text as shown.

It's quite glittery which made photography a bit difficult. 

The end is in sight for the 52 Journals project where I'm making one small (this one is A4 size) for every week of 2012. You can see all the ones I've made so far by checking out the slideshow in the sidebar or by clicking on the 52 Journals label below this post.