With a little help fom my friends- last Journal Quilt January 2012

I asked my friends to give me a button and a quotation that they liked. I made little two inch pockets and stitched the buttons on the front. A variety of techniques was used for the pockets - some appliqued, some machine stitched and painted. I printed the quotes onto calico, stitched a buttonhole on the strip and wound them around some small bamboo pegs and then popped them in the pockets. Some of the buttons are quite signifcant. One belonged to a friend's father who was in the Navy, another was from my friend's mothers button box. The quotations can be taken out of the pockets and buttoned on the front.

Button it! November Journal Quilt

Button it! November Journal Quilt.

Apples October Journal Quilt

This is my little journal quilt for October - apples. The challenge is to use buttons for the next 4 pieces. I've been picking the apples from my Sunset apple tree and thought the apple pips and core looked a bit like a button. The background is a rustic open weave linen and I embellished apple shapes with little pieces of wool, adding them like watercolour. The leaf shapes were appliqued and layered with muslin which was also blattered with the embellisher to distress it a bit and then machine stitched to the background. I added handstitching and then white laundry buttons. They looked a bit stark so I painted them with some dilute Inktense colour.
I really enjoyed getting the embellisher out and needle felting the background, the effect can be quite subtle.