19. Loss of Eden Journal Quilt

I was very pleased that I already knew I was going to upload my Journal Quilt for this week today as that meant I didn't have to go outside to look for a photograph. The weather has been completely atrocious today! This JQ was inspired by the theme set on the Sketchbook Challenge site this month which was: Fruit and Veggies. You may well ask how I got from that to a piece that features a gravestone image. It went something like this: fruit and veggies - fruit - apple - many associations re apples - Eve eating an apple and starting humankind on a downward spiral - Adam and Eve gravestones - the one in Biggar I saw recently (shown underneath). Does this still make sense to anyone?. Perhaps I should simply admit that I loved that particular gravestone and really wanted to use it in a Journal Quilt ?

I combined that with a technique described in the March/April 2012 issue of the Cloth Paper Scissors magazine that attracted my attention as it uses Steam-a-Seam 2 (a double side fusible web) that by chance I had recently bought in Hobbycraft for no other reason than that I had never used it before. It would be a lie to say that I followed the instructions exactly to make my background. Rather I read it and vaguely still remembered what I thought were the essentials when I set to work. I started in a fairly organized manner and then left both instructions and methodical working far behind me, just proceeding as I saw fit! I used vintage papers, lace, fabric, paper napkins (featuring apples and pears, as well as grapes) to produce the
background and then ironed this onto a fabric featuring script and machine quilted it. The image of Adam and Eve with the tree was made into a sepia one, printed onto voile and added to the background. The whole thing was still a bit fragile so when the piece was finished I added acrylic wax in several layers to make it more durable and substantial. The text at the top left reads as follows: "fruit of that forbidden tree...brought death into the world, with loss of Eden" and comes from Milton's Paradise Lost.