Fabric Art Journals

I just finished reading this book. What an inspiration! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I submitted a fabric book to Quilting Arts Magazine when they had the fabric book challenge. My book was titled "An Independent Woman" and can be seen here.

I have found that I liked working in this smaller size (I also participated in the 2004 Journal Quilt Project at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX).

What is it about this smaller size? Is it the size alone? In the past I have been known to make these large, gigantic quilts. In fact, I have several WIPs -- can't call them UFOs because I really am working on them -- in this large bedquilt size that I want to finish. Why aren't they finished? Because I have to work out a solution to what I want to do. Case in point:

The quilt top on the design wall started with the 9-patches. The blocks were 9". The star blocks ended up being 18"! This quilt top is huge: 108"x108". From a distance (and you can see it in this pic) it has a nice WOW factor; you can see the value shift diagonally from upper left to lower right. But up close the exciting factor is lost. Soooo... my plan is to add another layer. I have my composition designed but how I want to impliment it is another matter. I can do the tradional applique thing or some new technique like painting with dyes, paints whatever. If I go that route, I want it to be translucent not opaque, because I still want to see a bit of the value change.

What to do, what to do? I am going to work it out in the smaller size first. On fabric. That way I am not out a whole lot of time, I can play with some new (to me) techniques and in the end? Maybe I'll get a cool fabric book out of it too.

You can do any theme, too. I didn't realize that my quilting samples could be made into a book. I had a 10"x10" square of various battings and wanted to see how they looked quilted up. (Actually, I went about it wrong. I should have cut the samples in half after they were quilted and only washed half of it so I would have a before and after. But I didn't. ) Anyhoo, after all the machine quilting and washing I didn't quite know how to contain them so I took several very large safety pins and pinned in a spine. Works for me. Now I know how different battings react to quilting and washing. And, this spine allows me to add a new sample too!

I highly recommend this book. May it inspire you to try a smaller size quilt. It's fun!