UFOs

All quilters have UFOs (unfinished works) and I am no exception.  Mine go back over a number of years and I am getting tired of finding them lurking in various boxes and plastic bags.  So I have decided it is time to finish some of them.  Of course others should probably just be binned and accepted as having taught me something, e.g. a new technique.

I thought I would start with a recent piece.

This one only dates from the beginning of this year as I planned to do the Contemporary Quilts group's journal quilt project this year.  This was my January square and I also have a second unfinished one but I then realised I could not cope with working to deadlines these days so  I pulled out.

We had terrible storms at the beginning of this year and this piece was inspired by them.  It is made from pieces of fabric that I had lying around.  The background is indigo-dyed linen which I made on a workshop with  Janice Gunner several years ago.  The contrasting squares are space-dyed linen which I made nearly ten years ago.  The colours reminded me of the way the sea is churned up in a storm.  The Journal Quilt Challenge this year said you had to include a line across the whole piece so I used a fancy white thread and couched lines of it between the shibori markings.  I then hand quilted between the white lines using a Kanta technique and quite large stitches.  The squares were then hand-stitched in variegated thread in an irregular pattern.  I chose colours to reflect the colours in the linen.  Then I added some French knots to give a bit of texture to the piece.  The binding is plain blue dupion silk.

Now that it is finished it has migrated from the shelf in the studio to a folder with other journal quilts.  I have no idea what I will do with it but I think it is successful as an exercise.  I rather like the use of small squares mounted on something and frequently admire them in other people's work although I have not used them that extensively myself.