41. Stamping About Journal Quilt

My latest Journal Quilt for my 52 Journals project is also made for the latest theme on the Sketchbook Challenge site. They announce a new theme every month and for this October it was: Cabinet of Curiosities. Such a cabinet originally designated a room rather than a piece of furniture and is described in Dutch and German as an Art Room (Kunst Kamer). The phenomenon started in the late 16th Century and was a room used to exhibit (or show off) collections of rarities. This could be paintings but also all kinds of other things such as shells, jewellery etc. More info can be obtained here.

Above an example of such a room as seen in a painting by Frans Francken dating back to 1636. I decided to concentrate my own cabinet on paintings and in order to find paintings small enough to fit a collection on a 10" square journal quilt, postage stamps came to mind immediately. But what to put them in?

For quite some time now (okay, it has been years!) I have had an old printers tray in my studio which one day I hope to fill with tiny little quiltlets, although somehow the time to do that hasn't come yet. But the tray was just what I required for this project so I photographed it, printed out several versions onto cotton fabric and rearranged the resulting pieces till I had a 10" square subdivided into different sized cubbyholes. Then I found the stamps to fit inside. These postage stamps represent the work of Gauguin, Manet and Vincent van Gogh, to which I added smaller French postage stamps which have long been favourites of mine, specially the figure of the sower in a variety of colours, and the French cock. I also added stamps representing French architecture for no other reason as that they fitted perfectly into some of my tray shapes.

I added the stamps by using Fabric Mod Podge and also added 2 layers of that on top of the entire piece to hold the stamps in place and make them more substantial and less fragile. Originally I was also going to stitch them down but in the end I decided that would in fact weaken them. I hope the Mod Podge will be secure but time will tell and if they start to come off, I can always stitch them on then. I don't think it will be necesssary though!. So here it is, my very own Cabinet and when I found the vintage text "stamping about" it seemed appropriate.

If you're new to this blog, just a reminder that you can see all the Journal Quilts I've made for every week of this year so far by checking out the slideshow in the sidebar or alternatively if you want to read in depth about each one you can click on the 52 Journals label below this post.