As I mentioned last month in my post about the book Creative Quilting: the Journal Quilt Project, this is the final year for this fantastic journey. Instead of making nine paper-sized quiltlets each month, this year’s assignment was to use three (or more) techniques used in journals in the book to create our 17×22 inch (vertical orientation) journal quilt. Here is my journal quilt for this year:

For several years, I have had lurking in my brain a quilt about peace, and the horrors of war, and its innocent victims. The need to create that quilt stems from a visit to Hiroshima in 1996 when my mom invited me to accompany her on a trip to Japan. She had served in Japan in 1946-47 with the US Occupying Forces, and fell in love with the country, its people and its culture. This quilt is a test-run for several techniques which I hope to use on the large Peace Quilt one of these years.

Mom has a photo album from her two years there, plus her travels to mainland China (before the Communist Revolution, which came two years later), Thailand and Cambodia. One photo in particular, above, was riveting: a somewhat melancholy girl sat on a make-shift swing someone had fashioned from the rubble of a bombed-out building in Tokyo, 1946. Mom purchased the photo from a Western photographer, but doesn’t know any more about it. For my first technique, I took a digital photo, manipulated it to improve sharpness and give a faded “old photo” look, and printed it on fabric. If ANYONE has any idea who took this photo, please tell me!

That photo alone, though, wasn’t enough to carry the quilt, so I decided to include some of my photos of the ruins of the Hiroshima dome, the cenotaph to mark the deaths of all the victims of the atomic bombs and the Children’s Peace memorial.

That memorial features an origami crane in the sculpture because cranes represent good luck and long life. That led to the second of my techniques: a thermofax screen.

A what you ask? Do many of you remember dittos from school, before we had photocopying machines? We the ditto masters were made with these machines that can also be used with a special plastic-coated mesh fabric and a carbon photocopy (or pencil drawing) to create a stencil. I ended up having to order away for the stencils (fabulous service from Pam Relitz of Flying Images, rockitz@tds.net), but can see that I need to save up to buy one of the antique thermofax machines so I can make my own screens! (If there is anyone out there in blogdom who has blogged the process with photos–Gerrie? Rayna? send me a link and I’ll add it here).

I made my origami cranes, photographed them, traced out the exact lines at the angle I wanted, and had several screens made, then used metallic and regular paints to screenprint onto the background batik fabric.

I was having trouble coming up with a coherent “whole”, however. In browsing the Creative Quilting book (while waiting for hubby who had just had rotator cuff surgery and was at post-op physical therapy), I spotted the ogival window shape in Larkin Van Horn’s piece and new I had my organizing element. I rooted through my sheer fabrics, intending to dye or paint something into which I would cut windows, when I came across a rejected but HUGE painted sheer piece (about 48×60 inches) that was the first attempt at one of the overlays for Tree Spirits 2: Song of the Solstice Grove (can be seen on my website here). As I tossed the piece over the batik the tree trunk landed on the left side of the quilt…PERFECT!

After sketching out the location of the windows on the quilt, getting a nice balance of large and small yet permitting the screenprinting underneath to be revealed, I made a paper pattern which I placed under an old storm window. I used a heat-tool (aka stencil cutter) to cut the windows in the sheer fabric. Since synthetic sheer fabric is notoriously wiggly, I lightly sprayed the sheer with basting spray to adhere it to the storm window before cutting; because the fabric was light, I could see the paper pattern underneath and cut the windows exactly in the correct places (a metal ruler helped on the straight edges!). I then placed the sheer over the background, couched (stitched) gold yarn around the windows, and quilted the entire piece.

The serendipitous placement of the treetrunk on the left led to the overall quilting design, with bark, grasses and leaves and branches. In the background of the overlay I used a basketweave pattern, while I used a swirly cloud motif inside the windows. Finally, I couched two twisted lengths of the gold “yarn” (more like a fine cord) to what would become the edges, added facings which were turned to the back, and stitched down the facings.

I hope you like it…and thanks to all who managed to read all the way to the end!

ProChem is in Fall River, Massachusetts, the town literally on the edge of the state next to Rhode Island (to get to ProChem from the highway you drive through a few blocks of a neighborhood in Tiverton, RI). My dad was born there in (get this!) 1899, and no, that is not a typo…he was OLD when I was born, nearly 59!

Anyway, lately I’ve been taken with pictures of falling down houses here in Maine. This burned out shell on Shove Street in Fall River, maybe 2/10 of a mile from ProChem caught my eye every morning as I drove in to class (the motel is in a neighboring town). On the way home on Saturday afternoon, I finally stopped to take pics because I knew I’d really be sorry if I didn’t. The picture above is of an outside staircase, that went from the sidewalk to what presumably used to be the main living level of the former house.

This next picture is of the old basement /ground level. I love the old arched doorway to the stairs curving up… from the way it is made, I am guessing these were inside stairs to a back or side entry.

Here’s a picture of the charred window frame and old plastered stone wall:

And finally, to help you place things, a wide angle view of the arched-doorway wall and the house next door. It is VERY close…less than ten feet so I’ll bet it was scary for the owners of the new house when the old one was going up in flames!

It is that glorious time of year again, when the air is crisp, the leaves are on fire, the sky is screaming blue (alternating with stormy gray). I don’t know if autumn is my favorite season because I was born in early October (yep, I hit FIFTY this month…. don’t feel a day over early-30s except for my knees!), or just because autumn is so spectacular. After retrieving two quilts from a local quilt show on Monday, I took lots and LOTS of pics on the way home. The one above is one of my favorites…. as usual, I love the close ups. I totally love the sharp contrast of the nearly-black bark and the bright oranges and reds. I’ve been really inspired by some of Dijanne Cevaal‘s recent quilts of treescapes (click on her name, which will take you to her July 2007 archives and scroll down to July 15 and 7), and after the Week 2 dyeing class with Carol Soderlund, think I have several TreeScape quilts in my future!

While on the way down to the quilts, I spotted this tree and, on my return, pulled over for the first of a series of road-side Driver’s Seat Snapshots:

Then there was a whole string of glorious shots (all from the car! I WAS careful and pulled over to the shoulder, etc). Here’s one of turning leaves–I love to see the progression of color change from the treetop and tips of the branches, flushing back towards the trunk.

Then of course there are the startling silhouettes of branches laden with red, the deep shadows of the northern woods behind:

Here is a wide-angle shot, not so pretty, but it gives an idea of what the roadside looks like on Route 90 in Warren and Rockport:

Here is a glorious massing of red:

And a portrait of a young, understory maple:

And another:

Even the gas station had glorious shots. The best priced gas is at the independent station at Tolman Pond on Route 90 in Rockport. Here is a major zoom picture of the trees on the far end of the pond (in the West something this large would be called a small lake!):

As I took the picture of the diesel pump, a guy asked me if I was focusing the camera. I said no, taking a picture. He allowed as how he’d never seen anyone take a picture of a gas pump before, but I think it makes a good photograph. Who knows, we all know I’m slightly deranged (said in a John Cleese voice, please! “Deeee-Ranged!”).