Thursday, November 02, 2006

The Journal Quilt Project. JANUARY 2006.

STAUNTON WINDOW-On Display at Houston.
I belong to a quilt list on line, quiltart.com.
I am usually not a good deadline person, and I am not a big participant in discussion on the board. I also have a very hard time committing to projects and FINISHING them.
I have so many partly finished quilts. Ideas in progress. UFO's. Even belong to a quilt list to help get my UFO's finished!

Quiltart posted the Journal Quilt Project.
I decided to enter this challenge that was posted. It was in it's fifth year. I could handle having to produce one finished art quilt per month, considering that the only criteria was that they were the size of a piece of typing paper. After all, I scrapbook, and that's the format I use.

So, I committed to the project. Now, what to DO?? Well, Timmy and I had taken a weekend trip the autumn before, hunting down quilt shops. While in Staunton, VA, I discovered an antique/junk shop that had colored bottles in the windows. The owner let me take photos (he actually looked at me funny when I asked if I could take pictures through-out his store.)

The rest of the weekend, I was buying batik fabrics and kept seeing colored bottles. Ah, another quilt idea.

So, in January, I started plotting out the quilts. Do I do a series? Random thoughts? New techniques? What do I want out of this exercise? (other than my name in lights, of course!!!) I knew by fulfilling the project that I would be getting my five of nine quilts displayed at the International Quilt Show 2006 in Houston.
Great motivator!

I rummaged through fabrics and ideas spilled forth. I ran across the batiks, and the windows came back into mind. Did I want to do a series of WINDOWS? (still gonna happen someday)hmmm.
Started cutting fabric and fusing it, decided to add some Angelina fiber to make the shiny bottle and learn how to use that. Gotta start practicing my machine quilting, so tossed that into the soup too.

Then, a topic began on quiltart about netting, and tulle on quilts, and BINGO! I realized I needed a spiderweb. Mine is from organza.

Well, looky there. I made my first Journal quilt. And January, oh, we love January, because resolutions are still easy to keep, so I even sent out my digitial image of my January and February quilts on time.

I was shocked by an email a month or so later to discover that my January quilt was chosen to be one of 280 or so quilts to be published in November 2006 in a book about the Journal Quilt Projects five year odessy!!!! Click here to see the book (I'm on page 256 =} )
http://www.quiltingarts.com/shop/cq_book.html Posted by Picasa

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