50. Life is a Gift Journal Quilt

Time to make the weekly journal quilt on the theme set by the Sketchbook Challenge site. This is the one Journal Quilt made as part of the 52 Journals project where I use a theme set by someone other than myself and you would expect that to be more difficult but in fact it hasn't been. Amazingly every time the new monthly theme popped up on my computer screen it has related somehow to an idea or image already either on my desk or in my head.

How come? Well I like to call it synchronicity, a mysterious process provided by the universe for our delectation. In fact, a gift! Please don't ask me to explain as I can't. I have no idea why or how this happens but that it does, of that I have no doubt. The 52,Journals project has proved it conclusively as far as I am concerned. So I was no longer flabbergasted when the theme Gifts came up but simply embraced it.

And here it is. A 10" square quilt filled with things I think of as gifts. Just when I was about to start work on this one I read an article in the Quilting Arts magazine (issue 60, Dec/Jan 2013) about the American quilter Ann Brauer whose studio floated down the Deerfield river in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetss during hurricane Irene in August 2011, with most of her supplies and quilts inside. It was also a shop and thus her livelihood too. She must be a very remarkable woman as she's up and running again already. I used a technique she also described in the magazine using thin strips of fabric (mine are 3/4" ending up in 1/4" finished size). The fabrics I used (Marie Kelzer for Westminster Fibers) were bought when the stash of a quilter locally who had died was sold. Sadly many of these fabrics hadn't been touched by her unlike my own stash where every fabric has been cut into, usually more than once. I looked on the fabric buy from her stash as a gift.

And what is one of my most favoured gifts.  Beads, of course! So they were added as shown using a beading back stitch and a mix of beads in a variety of sizes (called a bead soup in US speak!) . Along the binding I used tiny size 15 seed beads.

The title of the piece Life is a Gift just popped up in my head as I was making the quilt and I used words from a vintage book to make it up. They were sewn on by hand, covered in acrylic wax to make the paper more sturdy and covered with gold metallic rub-on. And here it is, no. 50!

Remember if you want to see all the quilts I've made so far for the 52 Journals project where I make one JQ for every week of 2012, you can check out the slideshow in the sidebar here or click on the 52 Journals label underneath this post to read more detailed descriptions of all of them!