"Urban olives"

A journal quilt on this year's theme, olives... The background of "Urban Olives" is a screen print from my fabric-printing frenzy at Camberwell a couple of years ago; it seems the time has come to actually use those fabrics, in several projects -

The bit of the road map is a car journey we sometimes make, to Brent Cross from Kensal Rise. The olives' addresses are purely hypothetical, of course. ("Suburban Olives" is in the planning stages...)

Process note: The finished size needs to be 12" x 8", so I made a frame that size. The window is used for composition, and the outer edge is used for cutting the background before stitching. Once it's ready, the window is used to get the size right.

This is the composition stage, with "olive" shapes cut from the first bit of paper that came to hand, hence the one that looks nibbled -

I decided to use a facing on all the JQs this year, but must say I prefer other methods of finishing. These edges are bulky, even though the seams have been graded and the corners carefully turned out ... and they don't lie nicely flat.... What's needed is practice, practice, practice.