Friday, June 10, 2011

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


5 comments:

  1. Both of these are lovely. That machine embroidery stitch around the crane's square in the first one is called feather stitch, I think. If so, how appropriate! You are off to such a wonderful start with this new group doing the `12" x 12" quilts. I wish the TX group were as far along as that one, but I must be patient.

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  2. The origami cranes are always fascinating, I think. I loved watching Hannah make the paper crane, and now you've captured that in this journal. The woman in North Texas has such a wonderfully colored origami quilt. Amazing! Your post and that one I'll be sure to share with Sharon.

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  3. Beautiful and clever, as always. Green is my favorite color, so these birds and their habitat are especially pleasing to MY eye. s

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