45. Spice of Life Journal Quilt

If you've been wondering where I've been for the past few days, the answer is straightforward. I've been in my studio. No, not non-stop but most of the time. I was overcome by a gigantic wave of creativity when the ideas seemed to be flowing in faster than I could keep up with and thus I've been producing Journal Quilts virtually every moment of every day. I'm homeward bound. Only 7 more JQs to go after this one and I'm suddenly so full of ideas that I'm lost which ones to choose for those 7. 

But that is a good problem to have. Much better than not having a clue how to fill them! I know that when this happens I need to be there, both in person and in my mind. Open to the flow and ready with a needle. In the zone! One of my fellow blippers works in computer program design and he describes exactly what this process feels like here. I couldn't have put it any better. If only we could be in the zone permanently, but it's not something you have control over. In fact, it's that very lack of control that's typical of being in the zone. Somehow your subconscious takes over, bypasses that ever over thinking brain and forces you to follow in its wake. And you do because that feeling is SO good! I wish I could be there permanently but sadly eventually the more normal state of being takes over and you're soon back to pulling out your hair in frustration. So the motto is; when that mood strikes, throw yourself into it and work!

Enough of all that. Back to the more mundane facts of this particular journal quilt.

The starting point was the new theme for November on the Sketchbook Challenge site. It was Spice of Life and I choose to stay quite close to the theme. The question I asked myself was: what for me gives spice to life? Well as you might expect, the answer was not hard to find: fabric, thread, beads, colour. Around my studio there are always images and text that I've kept because on some level they meant something to me, and of course the place is choker block full of fabrics, threads and embellishment. One of the images that have been hanging around (literally on my notice board) for a long time is the above one, which features a glass and copper wire art piece by Josef Albers, 1921. The title is Grid Picture and of course grids are grit (sorry, couldn't resist!) to this quilter's heart. Josef Albers was one of the Bauhaus artists and I became interested in him because he married Anni Albers, a weaver who was one of the most influential textile artists at the beginning of the 20th Century.

So that was my starting point and I added to that mix other spices of my life such as the collection of Indian batik fabrics which had been on the shelf for far too long, black vintage trim (a gift from my mother), some sparkly embellishments, vintage text (from a book of quotations) and black thread. The piece consist of 100 different 1" squares which were machine pieced.

The vintage trim was couched onto the seam lines and the zigzag stitch I used to do this also provided the quilting for the piece. Some of the squares were embellished with black hand embroidery, others with the sparkly flower shapes and yet others with the vintage text which reads: "Variety's the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavour".  The words were then outlined in red stitching. The red squares were outlined with red size 11 seed beads. The result: a little (10" square) quilt after my own heart's flavour.

I can hardly believe that I'm at no. 45 of the 52 Journals project where I aim to make one Journal Quilt for every week of this year. If you want to see all the ones I've made so far you can do so by looking at the slideshow in the side bar or if you want to read about them in depth by clicking on the 52 Journals label below this post which will bring up all the blog posts dedicated to them.