Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

2011 Journal Quilts

I can't believe I am at the end of my Journal Quilt project! Here are the last 3 quilts in the series.

This is my December 16 journal. Most dyers are familiar with the work of Carter Smith. He is very well known for his shibori silk garments. He also sells scraps and I bought some! I decided to use a few of them for a journal quilt as a way to make myself break into the box. It's a big box of scraps and contains a little of everything from small bits to fat quarter sized pieces and they all are spectacular in patterning and color. I can't wait to make something else with them!

This one is my December 23 journal. I wanted to use one of my new Go! dies so I picked the chicken/rooster and eggs.

After I made the last one I put all 51 journals on the wall to see them together. Then I printed this image on fabric and created the very last journal.

I used the printed image to create the numbers for my last journal. 

I am so glad I did the journal quilts this year. Certainly some are much better than others but then some weeks are better than others too! I will not be doing journal quilts in 2012 - one year is ENOUGH! But we are doing the color palette challenge so check back tomorrow for the kick off of that.

A Journal and a postcard #2

This is my December 9 journal quilt and also 

a Christmas card design. 

I never do just one Christmas postcard design. I usually do 3 but this year, only 2. This Cardinal is totally unoriginal. It is an adapted version of the Wee Folk Art Cardinal Applique Block. I saw it on someone else's blog and I thought it was so cute that I just had to use it too. I used all hand dyed fabric on this one.

I made 15 of these!

A Journal and a postcard #1

This is my December 2 journal quilt. The center section is the design for one of my Christmas postcards. This one is a nod to the Modern Quilters and their great use of white. It was fun to pick the different greens from my stash.

Here's the postcard version. I made 30 of these and got them in the mail today. Every year I say that I will make my Christmas postcards early and every year I fail. I think going forward I will just embrace the mad sewing rush that occurs in December!

Journal Quilt

I'm catching up on journal quilts again! This one is for November 25. It and the next 2 are all about the Christmas gifts I'm making. I've been working on then since Thanksgiving week and I used 3 different fabric lines. I'm making my journal quilts with the leftovers. This is the first one.

 

Journal Quilt

Can you believe there are only 6 Fridays left in the year? I need to start pondering what I want to do next year. I've really enjoyed working on the journal quilts, even when I've gotten behind. I've tried some new techniques and compositions. I want to continue some sort of challenge for next year. Anyone else interested? If so what would you like to do? One idea I was pondering is a weekly surface challenge. Sometimes the only durface work I get done in a week is the fabric I dye for the shop. I love the monthly technique days that Estelle, Anne and I have so maybe I need to do something weekly....on a smaller scale of course.

Any ideas?

Meanwhile, here's my journal quilt for this week. I started with the green fabric. It was a piece that got a soy wax batik treatment. I first pared it with the dark gold, which I like. But it was sort of blah. Then I paid closer attention to the batiked fabric and saw some bright pink areas.  I added some bring pink inserts and quilted it in fuchsia thread and I'm really taken with how well these colors play together.

Here's a close up view of the stitching and a pink insert.

Check out the other journal quilts in the 3 Creative Studios Flickr Gallery.