Frustration

This is a technique I've wanted to try for years. It's Norieko Endo's idea.  You take your scraps and chop them into itty bitty pieces with your rotary cutter then sprinkle them on a piece of fabric and put tulle over the top then quilt the heck out of it!  One night I was extrememly frustrated with my son, who is having a really hard time and we just don't know what to do but find help, which we are.  So chopping up the fabric with my rotary cutter was very stress relieving and then making something beautiful brought me such peace!  I wish I would have made the middle of the flower smaller but I love how the colors fade from light to dark. It reminds me of a tropical flower in front of the ocean. this one is very heavy and made my sewing maching make lots of noises.

Star Trails Over Bolivia

Ok so I didn't even know where Bolivia was until I saw this show called "Art Wolfe: Travels to the Edge," on PBS.  It's my new favorite.  He is a photographer that travels the world taking these amazing pictures.  WHile in Bolivia he took a picture with a long exposure (8 hrs) of the stars crossing the sky while shining a flashlight on a cactus.  The stars left their "trails" through out the night and it was so inspiring.  So this is in honor of that show.

My wonderful husband gave me felting tools for Christmas. This was my first try at using them. The cactus is orange wool roving with yellow fuzzy yarn bits felted to cotton fabric. Then fused to the background.   You can't tell in the picture but the cactus is fuzzy and in Art's picture they looked that way.  The background is commercial batik with Ricky Tims "Razzle Dazzle" thread that I put in the bobbin. I 've had it for years and been too scared to put it in the bobbin. Well it worked great!  It was so much fun and really stands out in the quilt.  I also used Superior Threads gold holographic thread.  I didn't really finish the border to my liking yet.  I wish my star trails would have been more curved and I think it needs 2 more small cactus in the background but I ran out of time. 

This is blog is a journey for me. Most of my fellow art quilters are doing these. I wanted to keep a running record of my journal quilts that I am making this year. I made a goal to make one a week. So far I've only made 4 or 5. So I'm behind already. SO this is something that will push me to complete a journal quilt a week and you can see the why's and how's of each one.

Journal Quilt: A quilt measuring the size of a paper (usually) that is used for experimentation and practice of technique's and ideas.