Courage Journal Quilt

As I mentioned some days ago I wasn't sure if  I would make any journal quilts this year but I would leave the final decision till I knew what the Contemporary Quilt Group would announce for their journal quilt challenge and I had considered how to fit that in with my already existing plans for future work. Well I now know that the Group is running the JQ challenge again this year and the only requirement is that the journal quilts have to be sized 6 x 12". It was up to the participants to choose either a portrait or landscape orientation but that choice, once made, had to apply to all 12 of the JQs we make this year.

That fitted in beautifully with my  plan to make word quilts so I signed up and choose to use the horizontal (landscape) orientation. For the very first one (January) I used my word for the year Courage and here is the result. I'm going to use these small journal quilts as stepping stones for larger work based on words.

The quilt is made from commercially available batik fabric. The background was strip pieced and machine quilted.The letters were cut using the Brother Scan'nCut machine and machine appliqued using Bondaweb (WonderUnder if you are in the US).Size 15 seed beads were sewn on the letters and I sewed on buttons as shown. The final step was to bead along the binding using size 11 seed beads. This has become my signature for all my journal quilts.