Journal quilts 2016 - part 1 of 3

The first deadline for CQ's JQs is tomorrow. My efforts for the past couple of months are plainly pathetic - expediency is the watchword at the moment. But as JQs go, they are a nadir for me.

To get "something" done in time, I used a chunk of pre-stitched baking parchment (a sample for the Edge quilt), and added the requisite square of colour (purple) - as well as of the colours for the rest of the year. Then did some experimentation with loopy stitches, using a waxed white cotton thread and a floppy black linen thread. And even added lines of backstitch with the variegated red/yellow thread.

April

March

Not only are these two JQs extremely dreary (beige...), but the bottom one is upside down! "Must try harder"....

At least doing the stitching got me thinking about other ways to use loopy stitches, and of using paper. 

Try ... stripes of the colours, in between stripes of the crumpled paper; bigger patches of colour. Colour underneath and the paper cut back, or "peeled" back.  Try: Dense stitching. Alternating black and white - in squares, in stripes. Spirals (back stitched?).

The 8" x 10" size is good for getting to the middle of the paper without putting unwanted creases in it.

What I love about using the paper is the deafening noise it makes when being crumpled. And that element of destruction. Then the stitches reconstruct it ... but they don't "mend" it - once those crumpled marks are made, they are there forever. Paper has a memory. I suppose the loops are an aspect of that memory, thread going round and round.... or else cut and flailing about in an untidy way.

Part 2 needs a green square, or is it orange? - deadline 31 August. 

Here are the first two.

February

January