Houston Chronicle on Journal Quilts 2007

The Journal Quilts Project 2007 merited an article in the Houston Chronicle. Pretty cool.

Journal Quilt 2007

"What I did last summer"
17 in x 22 in

I am finally able to share my journal quilt which is now part of an exibit in Houston. This piece was important to me as it forced me to work through a long creative block and meet a commitment. The last year has been extremely difficult personally and emotionally, leaving very little energy for creative endeavours. And now I am dealing with a baby, now 3 months, who doesn't leave much time for creative endeavours!

Getting Back into it
It's been a month and a half since I've updated this blog. Mind you Christmas holidays were in there too. Did complete a couple of small pieces though. The one (left) turned out ok, thought the leaves are a bit heavy.

The current course assignment has me a bit stumped. Well, not really stumped, but definitely challenged. The actual quilting technique is easy. The difficulty is that I have to pay attention to the colour values (lightness or darkness of the colours) I use - make sure they are balanced and represent the values that are in my inspiration photo. Right.




So, after quite a bit of frustration, I finally found a photo. Then I analysed the colours then decided to dye some fabric. I used the 'value parfait' technique described in Ann Johnston's "Colour by Accident: Low-water Immersion Dyeing" book (ISBN 0-9656776-0-5). I've tried it before but this time I was really pleased with the results. It lookd like the picture in the book. :)

Module 2

When I finally received access to Module 2 of my course, I was really excited to start. Two of the first few lessons was on monoprinting on paper and fabric... way cooooool!! The monoprinting on paper worked pretty well.

I was ready for monoprinting on fabric. ...not so cool. My results are, at best, mediocre. Definitely not what I wanted. Sigh. I even did it twice. There was improvement the second time around. Guess I just have to keep plugging away at it. My tutor gave me some good hints.

On the other hand the other lessons have been going well. I am pleased with the stained glass quilting piece, though it is a bit tame and I keep using the same colour pallet.

Workshop

This year, for the first time ever, I signed up for some courses at the CreativFestival (formerly Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival). One course was "Spontaneous Geometrics" taught by John Willard. We worked very hard and as a result nearly everyone went home with a completed top for a wall hanging. I am quite please with mine. I may even finish it one day...

My Helper

I have two kitties, Leo and Smudge. Leo loves to hang around when I'm working in my craft space. He loves to inspect what I'm doing, lay on anything I put on my table, but mostly he just sleeps on my ironing board.

Crafty Sundays



One Sunday a month I have some friends over and force them to participate in some fibrecrafty activity. At a Crafty Sunday early this summer there were 4 friends over and we tried making compositions from pre-died paper napkins. The intention was to use them as backgrounds for stitching.