Quilted Diary #2

I went back to the project of Quilted Diary that I’ve been working on since last fall. Originally it wasn’t my own idea. I was approached by my friend Lolita Braza, who is an artist herself, and works at Book Graphic Centre of Šiauliai County Povilas Višinskis Public Library

I made my first book more than a month ago. I realized that it can only serve me as an example of quilting techniques. So I made three more pages. The first one was of fused applique:

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Using two fabrics on a back I wanted to show how important is to choose right fabric for the back. With the busy fabric it is possible to cover all mistakes, thread brakes etc.

For paper piecing examples I used one of my own works that I made when I was learning paper piecing myself. I made it about 20 years ago and had it framed:

Those squares are really tiny, 2×2 inches. The yellow, green and red are colors of Lithuanian flag. I had to add wider borders to match the size of other pages:

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And the last but not least was an example of machine quilted whole cloth quilt:

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Now I have 10 different pages in Quilted Diary.

Keeping in mind that my students are going to be beginners, that we are going to be limited in time, and we won’t be using sewing machines, I had to come up with something much more simple. And I did. I decided to make a smaller book, where pages would measure only 6×6 inches. Again, I started with making nine patch block and hand applique block:

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I added binding, again, only sewing by hand:

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Then I made two more pages: one for crazy quilt and another- for slow stitching. Here they are with binding added:

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Working on a book cover was fun because here I could add more design elements. I made my monogram, added yo-yos, on a back cover- foundation pieced log cabin block, and a lot of hand stitching:

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I joined pages together using the same fabric that I used for binding, and here is my small quilted diary finished:

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Not exactly finished! I added few more features to the backs of pages. Here is piece of batting for saving my needles and pins:

Pocket from my favorite cat fabric to store business cards and doily made by my Estonian friend Helga that can serve as a pocket as well:

Through all this process I’ve been carefully watched by my studio manager Albinas:

I think this project will work for the upcoming workshop. It is simple and there is no machine stitch in the entire book.

I want my students to be introduced to quilting, to see the variety of techniques, but also experience the pleasure of hand work. To get on a path of up-cycling, to find piece of mind when slowly stitching their thoughts into the fabric, writing their own quilted diary.