33. Weltschmerz Journal Quilt

Time for my weekly journal quilt again. The weeks seem to come along ever so fast at the moment. And I have reached no. 33 already in my 52 Journals project where I aim to make one journal quilt for every week of 2012. This one is a bit irregular both in shape and size. Normally I stick to A4 but I start them larger and then cut them down to size. However I couldt not bring myself to cut this one down as it looked perfect just as it was so it's a bit larger i.e. 13" wide x 9" high (or 11 if you count the fringing at the bottom}. This is turban cotton and it just looks so lovely all unravelling there so I left that too. 

It seemed to fit the theme which was inspired by the Van Gogh to Kandinsky exhibition I visited some weeks ago in Edinburgh (see my blog post here). I used all the words I wrote down while at the National Galleries, on my quilt plus the word Weltschmerz which to me seemed to encapsulate them all. Weltschmerz is one of those words which is unique to the language it's in, in this case German. I've written about this phenomenon earlier on this blog, that time about the Portuguese word Saudade. In order to describe it's meaning in English you have to write your way around it. Weltschmerz is a sad feeling that you have when you sense the whole weight of the world on your shoulders. It encapsulates many of the other words on the journal quilt too. For the lay-out of my journal I used one of the paintings in the exhibition as my guide. You can see it above. It's by Piet Mondrian. Sea after Sunset. 1909.

For good measure and because I like it so much I added the trees taken from Jacek Malczewski's work In the Dust Storm (1893-4) as seen above. Those lines of trees somehow moved me.

All the words were made using my Xyron Design Runner with a selection of different fonts and on a variety of fabrics. Some can be read easily and others merge more into their background and that's meant to give a bit of mystery to the piece. For the rest it's a landscape collage using hand dyed and painted fabrics (inclding the unravelling turban cotton I like as a finishing touch. The piece is heavily hand embroidered/quilted and beads were also added (of course!). It took a long time due to all the handwork and I'm detecting a definitely trend in that direction for the journals. Needless to say this is because I love the effect of hand made texture but it has me worried about time issues!