Strawberry Fields Forever ... an art quilt

My quilt guild's quilt show is coming up and one of the categories is a Burpee challenge. Participants picked a number out of the hat and were then given that numbered page of the Burpee seed catalog. The challenge was to make an art quilt inspired by the something on the page ... the colors, the flowers, the names of the flowers ... whatever. I hadn't worked on a quilt in ages and I thought, "Why not?" Maybe joining the challenge would get me back to my sewing machine and jump-start my quilting again. I got page #30, which you can see here:Lots of reds and pinks, which I don't use very often. Great, now what? Well, after looking over the page, I zeroed in on this:Hmmm ... "Strawberry Fields" ... I liked it! Just had to figure out what to do with it ....

Now this was back in January, with a deadline of the August meeting (which is now only 2 days away). Plenty of time, I figured, so I put it on the back-burner for a bit ... occasionally thinking about it, but never doing more than that. But as August approached, my apprehension level rose ... and when they reminded us at the July meeting that the quilts were due at the next meeting, I was beginning to get desperate. So when my mom came to town last weekend (a surprise for my 40th birthday) and asked me what I wanted to do on "my day", I said "HELP!" Hey, my mom is an award-winning art quilter, so who better to ask, right?! So we brainstormed a bit and came up with this:Don't ya love it?! And it didn't take much time at all (well, if you don't count the 7 months it took to get started LOL!) After we came up with the idea, she showed me how to use a picture of my feet (yep, those are my tootsies) to make a template for tracing onto Wonder-Under and then gave me some tips on stitching and embellishing to finish it off. It was a lot of fun trying something new and making an art quilt in my mom's style ... and I've gotten a little bitten by the quilting bug again, so who knows? You might just see some more quilting from me in the future. Too bad it's too late to enter anything else for the upcoming show ... but I'll be ready for the next show in 2010! Thanks, Mom! I sure did enjoy having you here ... love ya!!

Here's a close-up of the beading ... sorry for the bad pic, but it's so hard for my camera to get a good close-up, even using the (supposedly) correct setting.Now to cross my fingers ... the winner of the viewer's choice in this category gets a $25 Burpee gift certificate! Plus I'm going to donate the quilt to Ami Simms' Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative ... hope someone actually buys it LOL!

Two more collage pages

Worked on two more of Nancy's Collage Play challenges. These really are challenging for me! It's not just that these are not the kind of images I usually work with, but the images Nancy puts together for each challenge are not ones I would think to use in the same layout. She's definitely got my mind working in overdrive LOL! But it's fun when the collage is done to find a quote that fits ... I {heart} good quotes!Now I'm all caught up and can work on week 4. Wonder if I'll make the deadline this time ....

A slew of art journal pages

It's been 3 weeks since I posted, but not because I haven't been journaling ... quite the opposite! Here are 8 pages that are finished, and I have 6 more spreads I'm still working on. I don't usually have that many going at once, but they're just piling up on me LOL! That's okay, though ... gives me places to jump around depending on my mood ... I can do a little collage on this page, or doodle on that page, or write a little here and a little there. They'll get done when they get done, right?

So, onto the 8 pages. The first one is quite sad. A family friend's son-in-law was killed in a car accident ... he left behind a wife and 3 young children. I did this page while we drove from the memorial service to the graveside. This is only the left side of the spread ... the right side is the same background, but is currently blank. I plan to journal my thoughts about it all, but haven't had a chance to really sit quietly and dwell on it. And once I do, I don't think I will want to share that.The next 2 spreads were done using Sarah Whitmire's soul journaling prompts. She did about 3 weeks' worth of prompts on her blog, and I've done the first 7 or 8 days, I think, but these are the only finished spreads so far. I hope to keep working on her prompts, but it'll take awhile.








This next one was a fun page to do! My stepmom wanted to take me and my girls to find this guy that makes really great hotdogs and brats and such, but we had a little trouble tracking him down. After a few wrong turns and such, we discovered he wasn't even there that day ... must've been his one day off. Oh, well, maybe next time!I have a 10 year old!?! I can't believe how fast that went by ... people always say that, but it is still shocking just how true that is. Anyways, I just had to memorialize the passing into double digits. I love you, Emily!!This spread shows our misadventure with the train ... we got up really early to catch a train to Chicago to go to the planetarium, but because we had trouble finding a place to park, by the time we did find a spot, the train was coming and there was no way to catch it before it took off again. (Say that 10 times fast ... whew!!) The next train was an hour away, so while we waited we changed our plans and went to the (free) zoo instead. Hopefully next year it'll happen!Yeah, I told you I had a slew of 'em LOL! This next one was really fun and challenging to do. Nancy started a private Flickr group where she posts a collage sheet each week and we are challenged to use at least 3 of the elements in a spread. This is from week 1. I used 8 of the 10 images given. Unfortunately, I didn't get it done until the middle of week 2! Now we're on week 3 and I have week 2 and week 3 elements cut out and waiting for inspiration ... I wonder if I'll ever make any of the weekly deadlines LOL!And, finally, here's the last one of this post ... my stepmom, sister and sil had a "girls' day out" and I used some of the brochures I picked up to journal about it. Fun!Well, that's all for now ... gotta catch up on those other 6 spreads before too many more come along ... hope you have a great day!