43. Burano Colours Journal Quilt

I talked last week about my retail therapy in the form of googling Venice in a variety of places such as Amazon and Ebay. It is something I've been doing for a few years now and as a result I have amassed a wealth of Venice related items including numerous books. So when I finally got an iPad, what could be more natural than using Venice as the first thing I searched for in the Apple Store. One of the items that popped up and was instantly downloaded by me was the Magical Venice app This consists of a series of beautiful photographs of Venice by the photographer Roberto Soncin Gerometta who was born there.. This app enables you to visit Venice digitally whenever you like (and without incurring airline expenses!) via his photographs and accompanied by lovely music by Vivaldi!  

One of the series of photographs on the app is dedicated to the colourful island of Burano where all the houses are painted in different glorious colours and as soon as I saw the pictures I remembered I had a book about the island which features these delights. You can see the book below and that too was the result of one of my Venice searches, that time on Amazon. A different photographer but equally marvellous pictures! I let myself be inspired by a detail of one of the app photographs and for my colour scheme the book was the leading influence. 

The rest was simple. I used solid colour cottons and machine applique with Bondaweb. After finishing I knew the journal quilt still lacked something but wasn't sure what it was. I had already sewn on the beads but still I knew there was a missing ingredient. Synchronicity came to the rescue when Gillian came to the book making class I was at too, last week and handed over a huge bag of orange bugle beads she had spotted in a charity shop and she told me she immediately thought of me. Would I want them? Would I ever! Thanks so much, Gillian! As soon as I brought them home the Journal Quilt almost leapt up from my work table and told me it wanted to be bugle beaded!

To my delight there were two shades of orange in the collection, one more pale and the other darker. I'm not sure if you can see this on the photograph but it certainly adds to the lovely effect when you see the quilt in real life. I'm delighted to report that I will have enough orange bugle beads to see me through the rest of my lifespan, and I have already put them to good use on another project.

Orange is one of the hot colours I adore! Sometimes things come together so beautifully that you just know it was all meant to be, somehow! Magic, that's what it must be.