Peace Crane: a journal quilt

    Recently I joined two journal quilt groups, both creating 12" x 12" memories of special events or moments not to be forgotten. You have kept up with my smaller 8" x 8" journal quilt sketches. The size change could make me too serious since I have more time to complete them. Change and growth are good. I may still make the little ones.

    As some of you know, I filmed six-year-old Hannah demonstrating folding an origami crane. Wanting to commemorate that fun in a journal quilt, I looked on-line and found that Margaret Rolfe in Australia had created a beautiful quilt incorporating an origami crane. I could not find her pattern so I drew up my own. By the time I finished I had located it at ShiboriDragon where I purchased the pattern. Using it would have been easier, but I enjoyed exploring two different techniques...that of Katie P-M and my own crippled paper piecing. 

     When I Googled "origami crane quilts," I found the Quilting Board and inspiring samples of Margaret Rolfe's peace quilt put up by Alpha39 of North Texas. Check it out!  Now that I have bought the pattern, I  hope, in the future, to have a little traveling bag of smaller cranes to put together. Small handwork is supposed to be good for one on trips.

     I usually don't add a special backing to my journal quilts, but I didn't want the other bird to languish in my stash, so I sandwiched it with the batting and front side crane. Quilting it to attach created marks on the front which I covered with hand embroidery. This added to the meaning...holding things in flight together with the homey hand touch. Still, the journal quilt needed more quilting so I used a decorative sewing stitch on my machine to make the little waves going to the corners, another layer of meaning. Other efforts new to me were spray basting (from a can), making a mini audition board from a bulletin board with flannel atop, using invisible thread basting, and finishing a two-sided journal quilt. I made mistakes every step of the way, which are visible, but I so enjoyed doing this. Very relaxing.

Front side  ~ click to enlarge photos

Back side