More journal quilts

The theme is "Gridded" series; the first two quiltlets are here. The next two were made during the afternoon of Deadline Day and uploaded to the requisite website with a couple of hours to spare. No sweat...

Gridded: Camouflage

Although I used my thickest embroidery thread, the carefully-couched squares rather disappear ... hence the title. I had the pleasure of hours of hand-stitching (and catching up on podcasts) with this one. The black/white fabric was already quilted - it's the back of a sample made towards the CQ "Elements" challenge in 2015. So in terms of holding all the layers together, the couching functions as quilting.

Gridded: Illusion

Perhaps you've seen the large grid, the slipped rectangles, in a couble-page magazine car advert - I immediately appropriated the non-car page, thinking ahead to a JQ. The background has a strip of self-fabric added (with invisible stitching) to give a further illusion; with that ready, and all the layers carefully aligned I invisibly stitched round the edge and only then couched the paper onto the background.

For those of us who need to turn over embroideries etc, here are the backs of the first four JQs of 2017 -

The coffee table has become my "studio", spilling over with threads and complete with snacks to keep the spirits up and fingers busy -

 In the background, intensive and prolonged filling and sanding of bookcases, to make a perfect surface for spray painting -

Much progress was made on both the sewing and carpentry fronts.

With the change of month, it's time for a fresh JQ - I was on a roll and had enough fabric bits on hand to start another -

Yet more podcasts and stitching - it's ready to upload as soon as the album on the website is available -

Gridded: Off Grid

The black/white fabric is left over from previous JQs and the circles were made from threads that fell off the torn edges of the previously-prepared black backings and from other fabrics. Lots of careful, invisible, pleasurable stitching on this one, but ... I'm not happy with the rumpled look of the top section. Machine quilting might have worked better, but my machine is currently inaccessible.

Still, one of the aims of JQs is to see what works and what doesn't. 

On to the next!