52 Quilts Journal Week 15

52 Quilts Journal Week 15
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

The background is a fabric sample and the pendant is a piece from a metal steamer. This was painted with bright bronze and espresso metal paint. I glued the flat round bead on and then wrapped it with specialty yarn and maple coloured cotton. The fringe at the bottom has some odds and ends of black and white beads knotted on.

52 Quilts Journal Week 14

52 Quilts Journal Week 14
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

Another of my endless fabric samples, love this one, and glass leaf charms. I did a bit of machine stitching with rayon thread following the outline of some of the squares in the print.

52 Quilts Journal Week 13

52 Quilts Journal Week 13
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

More fabric sample, rubber stamping on coffee stained cotton scrap, jewelry findings and odd beads, some from my art friend Beth. Check out those legs, should have given her a bit more of a high stepping kick. I did a random meandering line of straight stitch to give the feel of motion and stitched the stamped fabric with rayon thread.

52 Quilts Journal Week 12

52 Quilts Journal Week 12
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

Well the weeks are just flying by. What can I say? It's not a good plan to start a project like this when you're about to move and it's taken me awhile to get back into the project on a regular bases, but now I am really into it. This page was not even on my radar until this morning. I've had the idea to use old family photos at some point in the project and since the Created Byhand Tuesday Challenge is to create art with the theme of pets, so the time was right. This one is chenille fabric sample, the photo is an old black and white of my brother, edited to sepia and stitched with brown rayon machine embroidery thread. The photo is printed on regular copy paper and brushed with matt medium and allowed to dry before stitching. The quote and date are stamped on coffee stained cotton fabric. Oh this photos was taken in an orchard and that is a real honest-to-goodness wooden apple box that the boy and dog are siting on.

52 Quilts Journal Week 11

52 Quilts Journal Week 11
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

The background on this page is Silk Jacquard fabric sample. The center square is a small sample and the middle layer is off white cotton, again from my stash of fabric samples. I used bits of silk flower left over from other projects, some are cut apart and then all are stitched in place with odd bits of beads.

52 Quilts Journal Week 10

52 Quilts Journal Week 10
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

I used a small velvet sample for the center of this quilt and sewed other fabric samples around Log Cabin style. The cross in the middle is another found object that I discovered several months ago while walking on the sidewalk along the Lougheed Highway in Port Coquitlam.

52 Quilts Journal Week 9

52 Quilts Journal Week 9
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

The background is cotton fabric sample, the coloured stuff with the heart cut out is a baby wipe I used to clean up previous projects, the Asian fabric behind the heart cut-out is from a fat quarter I bought in Armstrong when I visited my sister.I decided to fringe the fore edge of the page this time. Now you know that heart cut from the baby wipe just can't be wasted, so it will be seen in a future project.

52 Weeks Quilt Journal Week 8

52 Weeks Quilt Journal Week 8
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

This page is more of the cloth-paper. The pear is a digitally altered copy of my pear photo and the border is scans of my dragonfly ATC edited to form the border. All these papers were glued to acrylic felt with matt medium and brushed with 2 more coats of matt medium. I outlined stitched the pear with rayon thread, used a decorative stitch around the pear block. The border is random stitched with black thread and the outer edge is zig-zag stitched with black thread.

52 Weeks Quilt Journal Week 7

52 Weeks Quilt Journal Week 7
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

This page is a fabric sample background. The heart is torn watercolour paper brushed with Royal Coat sepia Decoupage Finish and torn rubber stamped papers applied then brushed over the top with more of the sepia decoupage finish.The lace ribbon and paper heart were stitched on the background and then the edge was machine stitched around.

52 Quilts Journal Week 6

52 Quilts Journal Week 6
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

The embellishment on the page has a bit of a story. Shortly after we moved in, my daughter was by the stove and we heard a clink. She said a spoon had fallen between the stove and counter. Well we retrieved the spoon, not one of ours and obviously already there and just finished falling. While we were getting the spoon out this pendant was also found under the stove. I used two sample fabrics and added the found pendant. This page was edged with gold gel paint after it was glued to the back of week 5 page.

52 Quilts Journal Week 5

52 Quilts Day 5
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

I was playing with dripping acrylic ink on to a used dryer sheet a while back, didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, most of the colour went right through to the baby wipe I had underneath. Of course it can't be wasted, so it went into the box of stuff for my 52 Quilts Journal project. I spread matt medium on the dryer sheet then placed scraps of paper napkin over the gel medium. I coated the whole thing with more gel medium and allowed to dry. I used a very pale purple craft felt under the dryer sheet and stitched with white and black thread, stitching on the ribbon as well. The leaves from the napkin image are roughly outlined with straight stitching with the black thread. I am pleased with the results.

52 Quilts Journal Week 4

52 Quilts Journal Week 4
Originally uploaded by okanagan_spirit

I have again used fabric from my collection of fabric sample books and added rusty washers, a button, a flattened pop bottle lid and "antiqued" safety pins. The safety pins came from a dollar store, the washers were found around the property shortly after we moved in and the fattened bottle cap was found in the Coquitlam Center parking lot. The button was found on the street,obviously run over by a vehicle. I sure hope nobody was wearing the garment at the time.

52 Quilts Journal Week 3

Well I'm finally back to my weekly journal quilt project after doing only 2 pages and then having to move. I plan to keep up with 1 page a week for a total of 52 weeks and use something recycled on each page.
I tried out my first needle felting without using a fabric background and created this flower. Any resemblance to a living flower is accidental, but if you think it looks like a real flower let me know. I had fun with this, the petals are made from Bernat Felting wool yarn. I used a piece a little longer that double the size I wanted the petal to be, fluffed the yarn and folded it in half and needle felted from the fold, leaving a small area at the cut end unfelted. I made 7 petals, overlapped the unfelted ends and needle felted to join into a flower. For the centre I made a small ball of another colour of the yarn and needle felted it to the flower and stitched assorted size beads on. Size 10 seed beads are 3 bead back stitch which also sews the flower to the journal page.
The page back is fabric from a fabric sample book which was saved from being discarded. The background is part of a piece of felt I made many years ago for a long forgotten project. I used more of the Bernat yarn to couch around the brown areas of the felt with magenta nylon thread. The ends of the yarn are needle felted to add interest and prevent them from unravelling.

52 Quilts Journal Week 2

Since I was on a role I started the week 2 quilt on Sun. For this one I chose a dark blue and gold print from my sample stash and recycled a crochet sample motif. This is the first try at crochet since I broke my wrist and the sample turned out a little large for an ATC, so here it is on my mini quilt. I stitched it on with assorted brown and cream beads and then joined it to the back of quilt 1 to make a page for my journal. Later I will join this to 2 more quilts to make a signature and eventually decide how I will bind the journal.

52 Quilts Journal Week 1

I have decided to take the challenge of creating a 52 Quilts Journal, one a week for a year. I sure hope I can keep it up so here goes. The idea comes from the Feb/March 2008 issue of Quilting Arts magazine and the challenge is to use something recycled or found in each quilt. Since most of the fabric I will use is rescued from fabric sample books that were destined for the landfill, I have that covered, but I will try to incorporate something more is each quilt. I have chosen to make my quilts 6 in. X 6 in. My first quilt for the week ending July 12, 2008 is from my fabric sample stash and the recycled item I've used is a mesh vegetable bag stitched down with 2 sizes of blue and greenish yellow porcelain beads. I think I'm off to a good start and will likely try out different techniques I'd like to explore for future projects.