Thursday, July 2, 2009

Enjoy the Journey- May Journal Quilt



Well, I'm getting a little more done lately. Must be that pre-baby burst of energy. Here is May's journal quilt and it's only July 3rd! I've had it done since June though, just now getting it posted while my husband shampoos our carpets...(great benefit of being pregnant).


I started with a base of commercial fabric that looks hand-dyed.

I used a bunch of green curly ribbons from the baby shower that I was given in May. I decided to try to melt and fuse them and it actually worked. I used bonash powder to hold it down and then layered netting on top to secure it in place with quilting to make it extra secure.

This is what it looked like after being melted, fused and layered with netting.

It started to look like a map to me with the ribbon like continents and the fabric like the ocean. I decided to echo free-motion quilt around the green ribbon parts. This reminded me of contour lines on a topographic map.


In the above picture you can also see the needle felted edge that I did with yarn and the Embellisher. I used black yarn to go with the black thread I used for quilting.



At this point I wasn't really sure where this was going as what was going to be a quilt about my baby shower in May had turned into a map quilt. I put it aside for a little bit waiting for an idea of what to do next. One day when I was putting away the gift bags from the shower that had piled up in my studio I came across this ribbon from one of the presents.

It has cars and trains on it and I thought that would kind of go with the map idea and it's from the shower too. I appliqued it down horizontally across the piece and then thought of the phrase "Enjoy the Journey". That fit in too as that's what I've been trying to do this whole pregnancy as I'm thinking this will most likely be my last journey into motherhood as I'm old and tired and our house and cars are now full. Plus, I'm already feeling like we are going to be out numbered with just two. Two is enough for this doubly blessed old lady.

So I machine embroidered the words "Enjoy the Journey".
I used water soluble stabilizer to write the words on so that I would have a guide to follow for my stitching. I stitched over it twice to make it stand out more.

So in the end it did all come together in a way that makes sense to me. YEA!

1 comment:

Laura Ferry-Jimenez said...

very cool - love how it all came together in the end! yay!!