January Journal Quilt

Finally a piece of stitched work is appearing here on this blog. I don't think it has featured since the beginning of December last year when I uploaded my last journal quilt for that year. This is the first one for 2016, unimaginatively named January. Still that says what it is. I'm making these monthly for the challenge set by the Contemporary Quilt Group. They set the size for this year at 8 x 10", portrait orientation. The other requirement is that for the first 4 months of this year the journal quilts have to included a piece of purple fabric at least 1/2" square, for the next 4 months that colour changes to green and for the last 4 months to orange.

I also set my own "rules" and I'm going to use a mix of tweed and tartan fabrics, most of them coming from Lochcarron Woollen Mill. The fabrics itself were my inspiration.  One of their fabrics forms the background which was hand quilted.

Pieces of woven cloth were put on top of each other and each layer was hand stitched down. Beading was added around each layer with size 11 seed beads and vintage buttons were added on top.

Finally I sewed on the binding which is an African fabric (from the African Fabric Shop) and as per usual I did my signature beading around the edges of the binding. It was great to sit and do lots of hand stitching again. Now for that large quilt which is still lingering in the studio.