49. Thoughts fly Swift Journal Quilt

It's December and the 52 Journals project is nearing its end so you will hear me saying the last this and that rather a lot! This is the last blue journal quilt. As well as being part of the 52 Journals, where I aim to make one small (this one is A4) journal quilt for every week this year, this one is also made as part of the journal quilt project organized by the Contemporary Group of the Quilters's Guild. They set some extra rules such as the A4 portrait orientated size and a colour scheme. Their JQs are to be made monthly, the first 4 this year had to be red, the next 4 yellow and the last 4 months blue. This suited rather well as for my inspiration I used wintry photographs taken in past years which had been transferred to batiks using TAP (transfer artist paper). These were made for a project I had in mind which never made it to fruition.

You can see this month's picture in detail above and it features one of the birdhouses in our garden, covered with a snow hat. In fact, I expect it will shortly look again just like that as the snowflakes are gently coming from the sky as I'm typing this and the weather forecast has promised about 10 cm (4") or so before the day is done. I used a technique I learned on Craftsy again (as I did on the previous blue JQ). I had enjoyed Carol Ann Waugh's previous class so much that I wanted to see more of her cheerful presence on my computer screen and did her Stitch and Slash class. And it was fun! I adjusted it to suit my needs and gave myself the additional challenge of adding the image on the bottom of the 4 layers of fabric I used to do the slashing. I also added couching and hand stitching and needless to say by now I hope, beading!  Once again I had great fun with it all and I'm only sorry Carol Ann doesn't do any more classes on Craftsy.

Above you can see the 4 finished blue journal quilts for the Contemporary Group (and by the way if you click on the link to the group you will see that one of my quilts, called Footloose in the Forest is featured there just at the moment!). The blue quilts look good together and I'm pleased with them all. I'm not sure yet whether or not I will participate again in their project next year. It depends on what rules and regulations they will set us and also on the size. I really prefer my JQs to be either 10 x 10" or A4 size. I have found in the past that longer and/or slimmer is not much to my taste but of course I should be open to more of a challenge. Just because I won't be making weekly JQs next year won't mean I will not make any. I love the format so will no doubt return to it in the future.