Journal Quilts and Fireworks

I was just finding a photo of my Febuary "Journal Quilt" to put here, when I realised I never put up a picture of my January one! ... I actually finished it in January too!!!

so ...

here is January -


"Let There Be Light"

The title kind of happened once I had made most of the quilt.

"What is a journal quilt?" you ask - well ... it is a sort of a challenge thingy for an art quilters yahoogroup that I am on ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Aus_NZartquilters/ ) where those of us who were interested are going to try and make an A4 sized quilt each month (or at least every couple of months - we have to make at least 6 for the year to be included in the exhibition) then they will all be exhibited together at one or more quilt shows/etc next year. The idea is to either do something depicting stuff that happened in that month, or an example of techniques we are experimenting with that month (even if the journal quilt is the only place we are experimenting with it ;-), or just some technique/idea/etc we have not tried before or felt like making ... basically anything goes as long as it is A4 sized and can be sent in and hung on the wall/etc.

It was nearly impossible to get an even half OK photo of "Let There Be Light" - because it reflected too much light! (both with the flash and with just daylight). The background is a bit of shiny black fabric (not sure what - it came from a garage sale or somewhere). I did a whole pile of wavy lines of machine stitching on a larger than A4 bit of fabric, then cut some Artists Trading Cards out of it and kept the middle for my January quilt - the green inner borders on 2 sides were a "design feature" that actually was a solution to the problem that the bit of fabric (left after I cut out the ATCs) was not A4 sized and I didn't want big fat borders on the quilt - I find that often the "fix" for a problem/mistake/etc ends up as an improvement on what I was originally going to do! I also did some hand stitching in between the lines of machine stitching, and added some beads. The machine blanket stitch around the inside of the borders was also another one of those "improvements" - that idea came to me when I was wondering if there was a lazy way to sew the binding down on the back - I pinned them in place and then did the machine blanket stitch to look interesting on the front and to hold the binding down on the back at the same time ;-) After I finished I realised it was supposed to be "portrait orientation" ... ooops - oh well - it will just have to hang sideways!

Here is my Febuary journal quilt -


"Leaf It For Later"

... I didn't finish, or even start, it in Febuary (oops ... but it was a good idea for a name! ;-) ... but I did start collecting the leaves and bits of yarn/etc I used in it and had it sort of planned (if you can call it a plan when it was actually "I think I will throw on a few of these nice gum leaves and bits of yarn and stuff and chuck this bit of tulle on top and then sew wiggly lines or something on top"). I started and finished it on Friday night - only took me about an hour and a half ... I grabbed my pile of leaves and yarn/etc, and a dry dead weed that I found on the ground at work (you can see the root in between the green leaves on the bottom half of the quilt - the top of the weed is under the bunch of green and red fluffy yarn on the top half of the quilt), and I dug out a bit of blue fabric for the background and a bit of something for the back of the quilt (I found both of those in the bag of freebie fabric scraps I got somewhere the other day ;-) and I threw the leaves and yarn and the weed on there, along with a little triangle of some nice fancy shiny red/gold fabric (the bit that looks like a mountain on the bottom of the quilt) that was on top of the bag of fabric scraps ... then I fiddle a bit and arranged everything, threw the tulle on top, checked to make sure it all fitted in an A4 sized area, pinned it, and went mad with the sewing machine and some green thread. Then I trimmed it to size and zig zagged the edges and then sewed some fluffy yarn around the edges too. Some of the yarn I used (probably at least half of it actually) was bits of leftover offcuts/tangles that were given to me by my crochet designer friend (who I visited, and stayed the night with, a couple of times in Febuary). The batting I used was also a freebie too (it is the stuff that they use for ducted heating - I collect it from some of the building sites around here) - I think the only bits of stuff that I paid for was the thread I sewed it with and a couple of the bits of yarn (which both came from balls of yarn that I got on special anyway - lol).
The bit of tulle was from an old hat ... one of those sort that I can imagine someone's great grandma wearing to church 50 years ago ... seems kind of funny that I used tulle from a dead hat, when earlier that evening I had attended a talk by a hat maker! - The talk was about this - http://www.hatweek.com.au/bluehat.htm ... I must get around to making a blue hat for that ...

Anyway ... That was a long rave about my Journal quilts ... now for the other half of the title of this post - the fireworks - earlier this evening I was at Skyfire 18 - a bit fireworks show, in the middle of town, put on by one of the radio stations (they have one every year, and I think they also do it in at least some of the other capital cities too - I went to at least one in Melbourne when I used to live there).

I like fireworks ...

I also like taking photos ...







er ... now I think I should go to bed - before my husband gets home from work (night shift) and finds me still UP!

but before I go - thougth I had better remind you that if you click on the photos it should take you to a bigger version, so you can see the detail better (some of the photos are bigger than others, when I put them here I just choose "medium" for the size to display them here because it probably looks neater and takes up a bit less space on the page - but they come up as clickable links to the original one I uploaded)

and now ...

goodnight ...