Handmade Travel-Themed Album and Junk Journal

I haven't shared any finished quilts lately because I have been totally obsessed with making junk journals. Making these journals is a lot like making quilts -- only with paper and glue, rather than fabric and thread.

I'd never even heard of them a couple months ago. And since then I've made several: two bee and bee hive themed; two Alice in Wonderland themed; two vintage sewing themed; two mini junk journals (one bee themed and one butterfly themed) and one travel themed. Whew!

I'm sharing the travel album and journal in this blog post as part of a Frilly and Funkie "planes, trains, and automobiles" challenge mentioned in this blog post.

Here are photos of this fun project (which will be a birthday gift for a friend who will be traveling to Israel later this year). 

 This album / journal is made from 3-1/2 X 8 inch tags that I cut with my Brother Scan n Cut. The front cover is decorated with travel-related images.

Inside the front cover is a pocket where I've added some tags. But when this is put to use by the recipient, I expect that she will use this pocket to store ephemera from her trip. The tag sticker at the bottom is for her to perhaps add a description of her trip -- such as the dates of her trip and the main places she visited. On the right side is another chipboard tag that will be perfect for adding a favorite photo from the trip.

When the tag (page) is turned, there is a double pocket for more memorabilia from the trip. And on the right side, is a 10-page signature of tea-dyed papers, providing 40 pages for journaling about the trip. 

Behind the mini-journal, is a large tag with room for photos.

The large tag flips up to reveal more space for photos.

And one more flip-up to remind us that travel is a good thing.

I hope my friend likes her travel album/journal to memorialize her fun trip later this year.

Fifteenth Quilt Finish of 2018

Yes, that's 15 finished quilts so far this year! But, in this case the quilt top was already finished. 

In fact, I finished the top back in 2011. The design is called Antietam and the horrible battle of Antietam and is by Clothesline Quilts. I received the fabrics as part of a block of the month program, but didn't even start the quilt until I had received all of the monthly kits.

I attended Handi Quilter Academy at the beginning of June with the goal of learning how to do more than just edge-to-edge quilting. My last class was with Megan Best where she taught some basic custom quilting techniques with Pro-Stitcher. This was the perfect quilt to try out something new to me.

So instead of just doing an overall edge-to-edge quilting motif, I put a different motif in the large triangles that point down, and another motif in the sections that are oriented upward. Nothing fancy, but it was a first step.

It took about twice as long to quilt compared to just doing an overall edge-to-edge, and in reality, the scrappy quilt didn't really warrant doing something semi-custom since it really doesn't show up. However, that also means that my boo-boos also don't show up.

But like I always say, "finished is better than perfect".

My Seven Shades of Gray Quilt in Fons and Porter Quilting Quickly

One more quilt to share that was in a July/August issue of a quilting magazine -- Fons and Porter Quilting Quickly.

I designed this quilt back in May 2013 and blogged about it HERE. I had wanted to make a quilt that combined the ROYGBIV (red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet) rainbow spectrum colors with a gray ombre progression. This was the result.

I never got around to quilting it, but always liked the design. Late last year, the acquisitions editor of one of the quilt magazine publishers reached out to me. She was looking for quilts made with precuts. I submitted this design because it uses only 2-1/2-inch strips to make the quilt. It was accepted, but I needed to make it again, using fabrics they supplied.

You'll notice that my original quilt used printed ROYGBIV fabrics, but the magazine version uses only solids.

The hardest part of my original quilt was finding the many shades of gray and the color scraps for the rainbow colors. By using solids, it was easy to use Kona cotton roll-ups (Kaufman's name for a roll of 2-1/2-inch strips). It requires one in rainbow colors, one with the shades of gray, and either black yardage or another roll-up.

I already had the perfect backing fabric in my stash, so I used it for the magazine version of the quilt:

I love the juxtaposition between the geometric quilt front and the curvy pattern of the backing. But now I need to once again find the perfect backing for my original quilt.