CQ Journal Quilts

I've made Journal Quilts each year for the last eight years but when I saw this year's additional challenge I seriously considered having a year off!
"Each month you are required to include an area not less than ½” square of a set colour within the quilt. For January to April you are asked to include a little bit of purple. For May to August you are asked to include a little bit of green. For September to December you are asked to include a little bit of orange."
These are the colours that I'm least comfortable with and as I've begun to use my JQ's to experiment with different techniques throwing new colours into the mix felt like a step too far.
But the penny dropped at a recent NW CQ meeting where a fellow member said that she has been combining her JQ's with the NWCQ group's theme, which this year happens to be pattern.
So, no technical challenge this year. My challenge will be to find an appropriate pattern and complete the JQ within that calendar month, something I've not done for several years and to have fun in the process. 2016 JQ's will be my downtime! To go with the un-appealling colours I've chosen a wacky palette which I'll use for as long as my eyes can stand it.
Judy Fairless led a pattern making session at NWCQ and peppers featured heavily. So here is January 2016 featuring my seedless pepper! (I might still knock those background colours back a bit.)

March JQ

I had lots of fun this month - I used a stencil cut from freezer paper for the first time. I can't believe I've not done that before. I much prefer the fragmented version I used as a border for this piece than the whole image which is currently rather stark - too much gold!

The background is 'pieced' using 505 spray. I love using scraps in this way and continue to search for less labour intensive ways of doing this, than piecing. I don't mind the raw edges but it entails a lot of quilting to make sure that the overlapping fabric doesn't flap around too much. You can see a white gap where 1/4" spacing didn't catch the fabric:

The stencil was based on a Saxon stamp. The top picture reflects the colour better - too much gold!

February CQ JQ's

I'm well into my March JQ  but suddenly remembered that I hadn't post February's effort.  I finished the stitching on this at the retreat last month and a couple of people said they didn't think it needed the final stage of burning away the organza with a heat gun. That threw me, we discussed it some more until Judy said "You made it to distress it, go ahead" And that clinched it, I made this JQ to try out the technique so went ahead - and immediately regretted my first attempts. But as I've come to recognise that I often don't 'work through' my mistakes I kept going and removed more organza than I'd originally planned, and now I've got more or less what I expected. I have been amazed at how the appearance of this piece has changed as it's gone through the different processes, so it's been a good exercise for me.

November Journal Quilt

 

This JQ was made withthe samples from Sandra Grusd's Improvisational Piecing workshop and has sparked a lot of 'What if?'. 

CQ Journal Quilts

In the excitement of the Little gem project I've fallen behind with my JQ's for CQ. In doing so I was beginning to mutter and chunner to myself about the lunacy of narrowing myself down to a simplistic theme and just two basic colours. Over this last week I have, at different times, worked on two pieces both of which are unfinished but have the majority of the quilting in place. Because they started off so differently in my head I saw nothing in common between the two pieces, until I put themtogether on the table to photograph them. I suddenly realised just how much I like the effect of the quilting on both pieces. Then I came to upload the latest JQ and looked at that and the previous post - I think my sewing machine is trying to tell me something!!!

CQ Summer School Workshop

It's a couple of weeks since I went to the CQ Summer School at Alston Hall and did a workshop with Jette Clover, but I'm still mulling over the ideas that I picked up, few of which were directly related to the tools and techniques we used.

We printed, we stamped, we made our own screens for printing and used various items as a resist, we did gelatin printing and all the way through Jette subtly but insistently made us ask questions of ourselves.

Before dinner on the Saturday evening, having worked at a pace with messy materials, we were told to clear everything away ready for a sewing session after dinner. We each ended up with a twelfth section of a piece of fabric that each member of the group had created during the day. The challenge was to combine them, using hand stitching and little pre-meditation, into a single piece to display. Inevitably I was drawn to a grid format but the variety produced was amazing, even more amazing was the calm that stole across the room as we each became absorbed in the task at hand - it was wonderful.

It was pointed out to me, thanks Davina, that with a little re-arranging my piece would fulfill the size requirements for the CQ JQ challenge. The red bands were from the fabric scraps that we took with us, the quilting and cheesecloth were added later at home.