My sewing machine: Only a few days ago I realized I haven't been at my sewing machine since early June. Even though I have some pants hemming to do for Cat, I'm really looking forward to getting back to it, getting back to working with fibres, fabrics, buttons. Journal quilts have been on hold. Today I chose to work on one for June. This is what I have planned so far, oh, and the binding and the other fibres. You'll have to wait until it's done. I forgot to mention that the orange button will be for the August quilt. YES! orange is the colour for August.

On the red fabric I used some dishwasher soap with a bit of bleach in it. I needed to experiment with the stamps. Initially I had far too much soap. Later I didn't get so much of the whitening effect, but it got darker instead. Not certain what happened. I then used black dye based ink to do some stamping. I just have to determine now if there are any possibilities for setting the ink? Hmmm, any ideas? I'm wondering if I can press it. The fabric is for Christmas projects so I've some time to sort it out. I also need to determine some time soon if I can use spray varnish on rice paper. I love to use rice paper and I've got quite a lot of it.
Angels be with you.

Valentines: These are a few of my postcards. I've also shown the front of a card I made for a wedding shower. Katie's fiancee has taken her to a nearby place where chickadees will land on your hand to feed. They both love nature and animals. They love each other and plan to exchange vows on February 24. We wish them the very best.

And I learned late lat night that my January journal quilt "One lone tree and moon in winter" was chosen to be on the homepage for the CPS journal Quilt Challenge for this week. What a very pleasant surprise.

One lone tree and moon in winter - journal quilt - January, 2007: As I've posted some other items since I first showed my January journal quilt for the CPS journal quilts group, I'll show it again together with the information I've just written up on card stock. the tree on the card stock was done with scribbler. Please click on the pictures to get an enlarged version with more detail.

Angels be with you.

One lone tree and moon in winter: my first journal quilt for the CPS Journal quilt group. I actually finished this late last night but was hoping to write a journal piece on paper before I posted it. I am running out of time and the deadline for the group, while "there are no police" is January 31. Though it is only 3 p.m. here, over in Australia it is quickly approaching a new day, a new month. And so I post.

I have had so much fun doing this quilt and have learned so much along the way. I will not show the back. I used a layer of actual quilt batting and the layers were not pinned very much before I started sewing. I will next time use something much thinner like a piece of flannel or something similar. The light blue and light purple fabric were both hand dyed. I recycled an old sheet for those pieces. They dyed nicely. The different textured pieces are dryer sheets painted with inexpensive metallic acrylics. Around the tree I zig-zagged over embroidery floss. Most of it was complete a number of days ago. I did more quilting lines, finished the edges (please do not look closely) and added the beads and sequins last night.

Watch for the further posting about one lone tree and moon in winter.

Wind - the word for artwords this week. Wind is important to me. I decided I would try to create something that would speak simply about wind. This very simple journal quilt says part of what I know. I have also written a small piece for windyangels and you that you might like to breeze through.

Please click on picture to get a more clear view.

Layers - a journal quilt made with fabric of cling wrap. I saw this technique on the blog of faerydi. As I knew I had some fuschia coloured cling wrap in the basement, someplace, for a number of years, I decided to give this a try. Basically you layer fabric and thread bits on top of a piece of cling wrap and put another layer of the wrap again. You iron this together, of course with parchment paper on top and bottom, and then you add as many layers as you like. There are real fabric layers because I turned it into a kind of quilt. I just used flannel between the top and bottom. The binding, if you can call it that , is quite rough. That's the way I wanted it. Besides, I didn't have lots of time to study up and practice as I wanted to finish this to get it into Inspire me Thursday. I hope I'm not too late.

Journal quilt stage 2 or maybe you could call it stage 3. It's a stormy blustery day with very cold temperatures. For anyone wishing for snow I can empathize most days, not today. Actually it is a lovely day to vegetate in the house and do some art, between phone calls of cancellations, postponements and the like. We were supposed to have our writer's group tonight. Sigh. Greg got stuck in the driveway on his way home at lunch. Children are being kept home from school and tomorrow has warnings of severe cold.

I've had time to wonder-under the painted fabric softener sheet pieces to my started quilt. I'm disappointed. With the pressing, the sheets lost much of their beauty and texture. A learning process I guess. I suppose it would have been better to just sew them on with the quilting.

I want to put on some beads yet. I was thinking about sequins BUT I don't have any here and I don't think I'll consider going out to get any. Greg called to say they are all being sent home and ALL the school kids are to come too. Oh NO!!!! There goes my time to myself.

I've been trying to learn EXACTLY what a journal quilt is. I'm not certain if I'm supposed to put writing on the back of the quilt or write it on paper in a separate paper journal. Either way, I think I can manage. I definitely know I will be learning new techniques and letting myself stretch and grow.

YES!!!! I'm excited.

Art - new year; old year AND tagged:
I'll start by explaining that I've been tagged by Suze. It's a book tag. You are supposed to pick up a book that's close by. Turn to page 123, go down five sentences and then look at the next 3 sentences. Oh yes, and be sure to say the name of the book and its authour.

Well, I put a bit of a twist to it. I had signed up for the quilt journal group, an off shoot of the CPS group. Each month I, and many others, are to create a quilt journal of, I think, 8 x 11 inches. Since I signed for the group things have changed a bit for me but I have decided I would still like to try to do this. With all of my art I've been having much difficulty trying to choose from many possibilities, ideas, what I would like to do or perhaps focus on. I am hoping this will give me some direction. Maybe I shall try to focus more on using fibers. We'll see. I'm not even sure if I'm still part of the webring I had joined last fall.

But back to being tagged - I have a binder with a number of Cloth Paper Scissors and Quilting Arts magazines. I decided to use this binder as my book. I didn't have the challenge directions in front of me and I accidentally went to page 213 in my binder. On looking back I found that page 123 does not have the required number of sentences, so I'll just stick with page 213, or I guess it was actually 212, after having added together the pages from the first magazine in the binder to the second magazine. So I found myself in a Quilting Arts magazine, Fall 2006, Issue 23 .

"I'm pretty sure they didn't use a MacBookPro, with dual Intel processors, nor did they use Adobe Illustrator, because, well, all they had were pencils back then. And maybe some nice technical pens. And a compass."

In these particular "Ramblings" by Robbi Joy Eklow she is discussing how she loves Art Deco. A particular piece inspiring her was finished in 1929. Robbi writes about the minimal tools used to develop the piece initially.

I started to think too, about the tools which I use and how technology has changed what we are able to do. I appreciate how there are still needs for hands, hand stitching, painting, sketching, moving the mouse of the computer. Though technology has greatly enhanced what an artist is capable of, there must still be the planning, the creative eye, the dreams, sometimes visions, beliefs and imagination in order to develop art.

I'm rambling. The top piece, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, is the newer one completed, anyway I think it is completed, just yesterday. I started it at the farm. I had some purchased pieces in the letters, bird and cut outs. I did the main background with wax crayons and then did some scratching of the swirls with a nail file. Later I pulled out the gel pens and started to go over the swirls and add more words. The fabric was at home. It is quite modern - meshy and metallic. So this piece was started with some pretty basic tools and then added to with more modern pieces.

The second piece I did last summer. I was playing with tape transfers. The size of the taped piece is 7 x 8 inches. It is of a cat we used to have named Doby. He had a wonderful face. I miss him still. I am quite pleased with how the transfer turned out. I'm not sure if I should play with it or just leave as is.

I want to say more about the particular magazine I chose for the tagging. As I had pulled it out of the binder to do this post it was sitting available for me to look at otherwise. Coincidence, luck, I'm not sure. On the cover I find "The Art of Journal Quilting". Leaps of joy. I discover information about how journal quilts actually started. I find yet more examples of journal quilts and I discover that I've made a good choice in joining this group. The authour speaks of play, of not worrying so much about perfection, and of going beyond the fear. These are things which I have been trying to deal with the past few years and I think I've been doing well. But this may be an extra little nudge to remind me to keep working in that direction.

If you are reading this and want to be tagged please feel free to accept. I will personally tag Fran, Darcy, and Terri.