Better late than never - I must stay 2 weekends and the week inbetween of vacation during the month of July slowed my progress in getting my journal done this month. Not to mention I have been busy working on post cards for a new swap group I joined and preparing to teach a workshop on how to make fabric post cards mid August. Alas my journal is done and ready to reveal. The thought for my July Journal started back in June when I was showing my June Tree to my quilting buddies - the question came up - why don't my trees have leaves - and when I looked back at my growning journal gallery - most did not have leaves... so I decided the July Journal would have some leaves - it is mid summer and all trees should have leaves at this time of year. I made a quick stop in Columbus OH to see my sister on the way home from a business trip to NYC in early June and we went to the Franklin Park Conservatory to see a butterfly exhibit - we had a wonderful afternoon and as we were leaving - I noticed a bronze tree scuplture on the wall - that had donors named in engraved in the leaves
I have said before I am amazed how many different tree motifs are around us in every day life – I really don’t look for them – they just seem to find me. I decided to re-create it in fabric for my July Journal. The idea for my Quilting Family Tree transpired on the way home from a guild meeting as I thought of my friends I had found thru quilting and how much they all mean in my life. I wanted a purple background this month because purple is my favorite color and quilting is one of my favorite things. I found this light leafy purple batik FQ in my stash and knew it was meant to be. For the trunk of the tree – I enlarged the photo to 8.5”x 11” and used a light box to roughly trace on fusible. I ironed the fusible to the trunk fabric and trimmed to shape. Then I fused the tree fabric to a batting scrap and re-cut to the shape of the trunk. I wanted the trunk to have some texture and the batting was a good solution. I used a glue stick to attach the trunk to the background before I secured around all raw edges with a zigzag stitch in matching color. The texture of the tree trunk is free motion quilted using variegated thread. I am very pleased with the way the trunk of the tree turned out. The leaves are cut from green scraps from my trash bowl that sits on my sewing table… I took random scraps and added fusible to the back – drew the leaves on the backing and cut them. I first laid out the leaves by fabric to try to achieve the same effect as the inspiration, but creative license took over and I re-arranged the leaves in a more random layout. I like this much better. Then I free-motion scribble quilted the leaves in place with a variegated green thread – I like the effect of this as it helps blend the variety of colors in the leaves and also fills in some of the open spaces. There are 10 different fabrics used for the leaves - to represent the members of stitch groups I belong to. I also included some special leaf beads in memory of one of our memebers who passed away earlier this year. They add alittle light and movement to the piece. The outline frame quilting is one of my favorite postcard techniques and I think it works well in the variegated thread. Well not it is actually Thursday and Blogger still will not cooperate on letting me add the photo of my July Journal - check the link to web-shot for now and I will keep trying
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