44. Find an End Journal Quilt

It's that time of the week again when I upload my latest Journal Quilt for my 52 Journals project in which I aim to make one Journal Quilt (this one is A4 size) for every week of 2012. And this week the JQ is also made for the Journal Quilts Challenge run by the Contemporary  Quilt Group of the Quilters' Guild. That's why it is mainly blue. The Contemporary Quilt group has made the stipulation that the Journal Quilts (made monthly) have a colour theme this year. The first four months of 2012 were to be mainly (75%) yellow, the next four red and the last 4 blue. I myself have added another theme that for the blue ones involves using some photographs I had transferred to fabric using Transfer Artist Paper (TAP) for some, now long forgotten, purpose. I came across them in the studio and as the photographs were all taken during a long and snowy winter and were transferred to blue fabric they were just asking to be used. The photo I applied to this JQ is of some fencing in a neighbouring field with the Pentland Hills in the background. 

The techniques I used are a direct result of my newly acquired broadband connection. As a result of finally being able to browse the internet in a more civilized (faster!) fashion I went ever so slightly mad (or should that read: completely bonkers?!). Rather than saving time (which was the intention) I was spending SO much time online that it was to the detriment of my stitching. Of course common sense eventually prevailed (It did take several months) and I have returned to setting myself a firm limit (and yes indeed shorter than before) of how long I am allowed to spend behind my computer (although I'm not counting iPad time). But in the beginning I also ventured into the world of online classes which until then was mainly closed to dial-up connections. 

One of the places I found was Craftsy and when I got my iPad this was one of the first apps I installed. And the class that immediately attracted my attention was called  Stupendous Stitching by Carol Ann Waugh.

The reason why it attracted my attention was that the end product looked very much like my Threadtangle quilt that I made about 2 years ago (detail shown above). After more than 20 years of quilting I know only too well that there is nothing new under the sun and it is perfectly possible for various people to come up with very similar techniques and ideas and I was immediately interested in how Carol went about producing something that looked very much like what I had done on the Threadtangle quilt. So I paid and then had lots of fun watching Carol Ann at work in her videos. She's a woman after my own heart (her motto is There are No Mistakes!) and you can feel her pleasure at making her art shining through on the videos. As I was beginning this Journal Quilt I suddenly thought to myself : I will work through these lessons with her, but rather than using all the colours of the rainbow as is Carol Ann's and my delight, I will try and do it in a monochromatic colour way, blue in this case. And it worked wonderfully well. Not just that but I thoroughly enjoyed myself at the same time. I need hardly add that I just had to add that friedaness to the piece in the form of beads!! How could I not?

I used the TAP photograph as shown  The vintage text (another element that is uniquely mine) reads: "Find an end, or make one for all men in all times". This is in fact a put together sentence, of two lines cut from a vintage book. They were pages apart but to me they seemed to belong together.

I also added a moon to this thread landscape. It's a pendant I bought from Eebeads some years ago and that was originally in black/white. I used blue alcohol ink to paint it to merge with the other blues. The only reason I used the alcohol paints (from Ranger) was because they were still out in the studio in plain view,  after my bookmaking class of a few weeks ago. It worked wonderfully well on this Capiz shell pendant. It was a delight to put this journal quilt together and specially as much hand stitching was involved. Something that will forever be my first love in the textile world I live and work in. In the end I always return to my beloved running stitch but I've also used lazy daisy stitch and cross stitch on this journal quilt.