Peace Journal Quilt

Let's start by telling you that this last Journal Quilt I have made for this year is in no way a reflection of what is happening today in our Parliament, for either one side of the debate or the other. Our MPs (Members of Parliament) are voting later on today, on whether or not to send in war planes to bomb IS in Syria (we are already bombing in Iraq). It's pure chance that I'm uploading this quilt today. It was made back in October and in fact, the decision to use the word PEACE for December's Journal Quilt was taken back in January when I compiled a list of words I wanted to use on the 12 JQs for 2015.

That said, this is the final word quilt for this year. The journal quilts I made were all for a yearly challenge set by the Comtemporay Quilt Group who set the size for the quilts this year at 6 x 12". I decided to dedicate each one to a word and thus used a horizontal orientation for them all. There will be a new challenge for 2016 but the details haven't been revealed yet nor have I decided whether or not I will participate. But if you are interested you need to be a member of the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles as well as of the Contemporary Quilt Group within that Guild.

Now for this particular journal quilt! It was made using bits of gelli plate printed (using stencils) fabrics that were raw edge appliquéd together and machine quilted. I added the circle which was made separately by putting snippets of transparent fabrics on a piece of background fabric, covering it with a transparent fabric and hand stitching the circle. It was machine appliquéd (using gold thread and a buttonhole stitch) onto the background and then beaded along the edges.

The letters for the word PEACE were cut from a sparkling, transparent fabric (with Bondaweb applied to the back). I used my Brother Scan'nCut machine to do this. They were machine stitched onto the background and also beaded as you can see on these detailed pictures. I used size 15 gold seed beads.

Finally I added my now usual signature in the form of size 11 seed beads around the edges of the binding. Sometime soon I will take a photograph of all the journal quilts I made this year.