Journal quilts

Because of going to Canada and then the Festival of Quilts - and then picking up the pieces! - I got a bit behind with the latest batch of journal quilts for the Contemporary Quilt challenge. This year they're 6" x 12", and I'm using the theme of the moon - based on folkloric names of the different months.
So here we have May - Flower Moon; June - Rose Moon; July - Thunder Moon; August - Grain Moon. The first two have a lot of hand stitching - couching, stem stitch, french knots - and the final one uses fancy machine stitching, which took much longer than I thought it would! Thunder Moon might look "thrown together" -- it is in reality a resonant amalgam of considered juxtapositions (translation: bits from my scrap bag that I quickly auditioned, and went with gut feeling).

imho the quilts should help "move you on" somehow, whether trying a new technique, combining new colours, using different sorts of fabrics - but how are these moving me on ...

First of all, working with the one theme all year - and having at least the moon shapes "fit together" so that the total will be a frieze. Learning point: plan the colours too!

New techniques? May is backed with a flower print, and I put down the coloured fabrics on the front before machining round the flowers on the back, then cut back the fabric. The black edging is hand couched - a narrow zigzag on the machine didn't work out.

July - how to quilt thunder? I thought a series of boxes that sort of grew out of each other - but when the fabric hit the machine, that turned into a sort of greek-key design, rolling across the sky.

August - I idly asked Tony how he'd represent a "grain moon" and he thought of loaves of bread made from grain ... flour ... mills -- so that's why the moon is quilted like a millstone! The ears of grain are done in various variegated threads, over layers of sheer fabrics, sort of like the "clouds" in Thunder Moon. The sheer layers, and the shapes of the "ears of grain", reminded me of the "Fantasy Forest" pieces I was making ten or more years ago -
very fiddly, all those little bits of fabric!