Don't fence me in

There has been no series of monthly Journal Quilts this year but nevertheless a few of them have been made. This is one of them, made for the upcoming (early 2018) exhibition of Thistle Quilters. We were all asked to make an A4 landscape orientated one for a specific week this year. My week was the one starting the 28th May. The theme was to be: News, and we could interpret that as we wished.

Truth be told I have been avoiding the "big" news as much as possible for the last few years, zapping away from any news programmes as if my life depended on it. Maybe because it had started to affect my mental well-being. So no world issues but instead I found my news much closer to home.

This year has been all about Flora, after she arrived with us in November last year (1st anniversary coming up soon!) so she had to feature. During that week of the 28th May I was participating in the Artful Adventures, Stroll through my Hood project (organized by Nathalie Kalbach) where we were to look at our neighbourhood with new eyes and take photographs based on prompts she gave us. One of the pictures I took at that time was of a very old gate in the Penicuik Estate. I have re-pictured it below although this one was taken yesterday.

I combined Flora with the gate and that formed the base of my journal quilt.

The quilt was made using a combination of hand dyed fabrics (the pink and the green) as well as a backing cloth that had been used to sop up the paint in my studio (the gate). Flora herself is an image transfer from a photograph.

The quilt was machine quilted, raw edge appliquéd with hand stitching and embroidery. It has been further embellished with size 11 seed beads and sparkly sequins.