WIP Wednesday part 2

Here is the second half of my Journal Quilt Challenge 2006 pages:

July_Hunting Fairies
September_ Granny's Flower Garden
October_ Aunt Edie's Apple Core
November_ From Granny to Rie
December_ Passing the Torch

I am so glad I took the plunge to join this challenge. I had never done anything like this, had only been making quilts for 4 years, and not many of them. I so admired the work of the Art Image Challenge and wanted to do something similar but had no self confidence at all about creating journal quilts. I had wanted to do some sort of quilt project about Granny's life and after seeing the fabric book that Debra made in the AIC , I knew I wanted to make a fabric book. This challenge gave me the ideal opportunity to put those two ideas together. (I'd like to leave a link to Debra's book but do not know if the AIC is still available online.)

I was forced to learn many new skills and techniques and don't know when I've done anything more satisfying with my creative urges. I look forward to learning and stretching and improving more this year through the 12x12 x12 Challenge. I'm even considering using some of the techniques I learned here into larger art quilts.

I realize now that while I was enthralled with quilting, I would not be happy just making traditional quilts from others patterns. I've always preferred change and learning. I prefer creation to maintenance. For proof, you would only have to look at my housekeeping, or lack thereof.

WIP Wednesday

My main WIP today is the January 12x12 project and don't want to post it until it's due later this week. Debra suggested that I show all the pages of my JQChallenge 2006 together before I assemble them into a book, so I decided this was what I'd show today.

My fabric book was designed as a tribute to my Granny who had such an impact on my life. She was a wife, mother, grandmother, quiltmaker, gardener, reader, and great cook who also compiled a family history of her pioneer ancestors. Except for the cooking, I was influenced by her in my love of reading, gardening, quiltmaking, and genealogy. She left her quilt patterns, sample blocks, and ephemera to me as I was the only family member who was interested, so I used much of this as inspiration and material for the pages of the book. I was also fortunate to fall heir to many vintage family photos, and using these photos to print onto fabric for this project has turned me onto photography as another source of material for my quilts.

I finished pages for 10 months of the year and felt that I had completed my original mission so I decided not to go back and make up the other 2 months. I finished both front and back of the pages and in some cases added additional pages to the main page. I'm going to show mainly the fronts in this post.


The months in order are: January_Lalia: Pieces of A Life
February_ Family Heritage
March_ One Flesh
April_ Sunshine & Shadow
May_ Bless My Kitchen

Can't upload the rest in this post. Stay tuned for the next post.

December Journal Quilt_Passing the Torch

This final page in the fabric book honoring my Granny is a joint effort by three generations; I got granddaughter Mandy's permission to use a block she put together from my scrap bag; to her block I added some more of Granny's blocks, fabrics and sewing notions and designed, fused and sewed it together myself. Passing the Torch celebrates the passage of the love of quilting from Granny to me and on to Mandy and future generations.

I was so proud of Mandy when she put together such an attractive block from scraps without a pattern and without supervision. It looked so nice that I knew it had to be the centerpiece of the final journal quilt in this series. I sewed on muslin borders to make it the proper size and then fused on the Grandmother's Flower Garden block and the photos printed on cotton fabric; then I machine stitched around each fused piece.

A photo of Mandy holding Ditto centers the Flower Garden block; the lower photo is of five generations of our family and is the only photo that contains both Granny and Mandy. You have to use your imagination to see Mandy because she is in her mother's tummy and was born two months later. The baby is her brother, Ben. Her mother, my daughter Kat, was quite ill at this time with the beginning of the kidney problems that have plagued her all these years. Granny was 92 in this photo and only lived a year longer. My Mom, Evy, and I are also in this photo which is framed with long antique brass sewing machine bobbins. A bow of bias binding is tipped with tiny vintage wooden thread spools.

A piece of silk organza attached to the center of Mandy's block has the following quotation from Jennifer Chiaverini printed onto it:

"At last she understood the true lesson of the Christmas Quilt, that a family was an act of creation, the piecing together of disparate fragments into one cloth--often harmonious, occasionally clashing and discordant, but sometimes unexpectedly beautiful and strong. Without contrast there was no pattern, as Great-Aunt Lucinda had taught her long ago, and each piece, whether finest silk or faded cotton, would endure if sewn fast to the others with strong seams--bonds of love and loyalty, tradition and faith."

The back of the page has more of Granny's sample blocks and pieces fused onto a muslin background which is fused onto a thin cotton batting. One edge is finished with a binding of strips of vintage cloth; the other three edges are satin stitched. I had planned to bind the whole piece with the colorful vintage fabrics but after attaching the one side I thought that doing the whole edge would overwhelm the page.

I am very pleased with the journal quilt fabric book that I've completed. I missed a couple of months but think that I've said what I planned on saying from the conception of this project. I still have to figure out how to attach the pages into a book format and will post a photo when that is completed. I cannot express how happy I am to have taken part in this Challenge. It gave me the opportunity to learn so much about art quilting and fabric collage as well as creating the memorial to my Granny's life and creativity that I've wanted to do for several years. I now plan to display the finished fabric book, in July, at the art show on Missouri Day in my and Granny's hometown, Fowler, Colorado. There are many people there who remember her and will appreciate this tribute to her.

It is appropriate that I quoted from one of the Elm Creek Quilt books, since Jennifer Chiaverini is responsible for me being involved with online quilters. When I read the Master Quilter as a new quilter, I was fascinated by the online group of quilters and decided to get online and see what it was all about. That is how I became a member of the About.com Quilting Forum which led to The Journal Quilt Challenge 2006, which finally brought us to the Quilt Studio Webring (see sidebar button).

Nov. Journal Quilt_ From Granny to Rie

My November journal quilt celebrates the passing of traditions, skills, and loves from generation to generation; specifically from Granny to me (Francie Rie, my childhood nickname). I used vintage fabrics and ephemera from Granny's stash to construct this fabric collage, the only non-vintage item is the chicken button, but for Granny I had to include a chicken.

The background fabric is two three pound muslin sugar sacks from the Crystal Sugar Company factory in Rocky Ford, Colorado (my birthplace). Poppa worked at the factory and Daddy raised sugar beets for it on the farm. Granny would bleach out the text on the sacks and use the muslin in her quilts. The last two that I found in her quilting stuff have been very precious to me and I've known that someday I'd find a way to use them meaningfully. I made no effort to remove the age stains from the sacks because I didn't want to fade the labels any more than they already were.

The top border is a remnant of a pieced border that was left over when a quilt was finished. The Log Cabin fabrics were pieces from her stash and frame a four generation photo of Gramma Graham, Granny Corf, Mom Evy, and baby Francie Rie (short for Marie, which my cousin, Deanie couldn't pronounce). Notice that the smile hasn't changed that much through the years. These wonderful women gave me a very good start in life.

The photo and the ephemera are all printed onto prepared cotton sheets and fused to the background and edge stitched by machine. The green label is from a package of red rickrack that still has some of the rickrack on it. (Granny's generation saved and used everything.) The green hexagons are from the unfinished Grandmother's Flower Garden pieces that I've used in several of my journal quilts. I made a yo-yo from a piece of her fabric and attached it to the center of the circle logo with an old red button. The crocheted butterfly is also from Granny's stash and is machine stitched on with an old bakelite button for the body. The left side was bordered by sewing on a part of an actual old tape measure from the collection.

The back has one of Granny's quilt pattern clippings from the Capper's Weekly printed on cotton and fused on along with two old needle packages, which were also printed onto cotton and fused on. These appear to be from the WWII time frame but the Eagle has "made in Germany" printed on it so must be from right after the war when the USA was occupying part of Germany.
I can't quite imagine the Germans making USA patriotic needle packages while they were fighting us.


I've had the pieces and parts of this page in my Journal Quilt project box since the first of the year and am so pleased that I finally figured out a way to use them in this tribute to Granny's impact on my life.

If you click on the picture to enlarge it you will be able to see a note in Granny's handwriting on the clipping.