51. Stoclet Journal Quilt

I'm nearing the end of the 52 Journals project and just had to make at least one journal quilt inspired by one of my most favourite artists: Gustav Klimt. This Austrian artist is a master of decoration and also used a lot of gold in his work so a man after my own heart.

The Knight, one of the 3 panels that together form the Stoclet Frieze, is a piece I've always loved which might well have something to do with the fact that when you look at a picture of it (see above) it could just as easily be a quilt as a painting. It's hanging in the Dining Room of the Stoclet Palace in Brussels. This house is still in private hands and is not open for public visits so at the moment there is no opportunity to see it in person, although the entire house is now a Unesco World Heritage site. This panel in itself could inspire many pieces and in fact Klimt's work could have provided me with the inspiration for all my 52 Journals! Now there is a thought! If you look for instance at the square filled with triangles at the bottom you can see that was the start for my Fluttering wallhanging. 

For this Journal Quilt I choose the area slight higher and drew it as a pattern using my Electric Quilt computer program. At first I wanted to use it as a strictly geometric pattern but in the end decided that random would be more to my taste and using my collection of batik remnants set to work piecing away and you can see the result at the top. I then machine quilted over the entire surface of the piece with a variegated thread. That worked quite well but the journal quilt  needed something else to finish it.

And I found that something else in the shape of inchies. This was a rage some years ago, with the idea being to make art on a 1" square.

I looked around again for something to make the inchies out of and found what was left of the background of a fabric postcard made many years ago, called Forest Lovers and which you can see above (the image of the lovers is from Alpha Stamps). I had enough left to produce 7 inchies which I spread over the surface of the journal quilt as you can see above and then followed in Klimt's footsteps by beading around them using real gold seed beads. Of course the edges along the binding were also beaded.

So this is it, no. 51, and only one left to go! Remember you can see all the JQs thus far on the slideshow in the sidebar here or by clicking on the 52 Journals label below this post.