April Challenges

My April Contemporary Quilt 6 x 12 inch Journal piece is based once again on old peeling distressed doors, in this case on the remnants of paint that pick out the patterns of woodgrain in this photo from Greece below.

I used a woodgraining 'rocker' tool from a decorating shop to make patterns in acrylic paint on a piece of plastic and then took monoprints using a variety of fabrics - silk noile worked particularly well

Love the patterns it made but after quilting between the paint lines, it looked a bit anaemic so added more paint with a palette knife afterwards.

The BQL challenge for April was quite different. Handbags aren't really my thing either in real life or in quilts so this challenge was well outside my comfort zone (but Good-For-Me)

But having discovered this very large African waxprint of purses to use as backing (for scale, this is 12 x 12 inch), I decided to use scaps of African fabrics and other wild prints, embellished with beads, buttons and ribbon.

The handbags were pieced from strips of background fabric around a central 'handbag' cut using a template, and then trimmed to size. I wish now I'd introduced some 'wackier' angles in the style of Gwen Marston - I used to really enjoy improvisational piecing and taught workshops on 'wacky stars'.

Ian and I were woken at 7 this morning by the arrival of pallets of paving stones , gravel and sand - the challenge for the rest of the day is to trundle these through the house into the back garden without doing our backs in!