Valerean

While out wandering last Saturday my guy and I visited Mossy Oaks Antique Mall in Belleview, Florida. It's a bit north of where we usually drive, but we wanted to see the place. The lovely goods there had such excellent prices I found all the autumn decor I've been searching for, plus extra goodies for my impending two-week vacation. I got a large pack of old magazine pages, which I'll use for a junk journal I'm planning to make. That also included two vintage full-color Christmas illustrations of Santa at home with the missus and the elves. This green and white vintage tablecloth was in near-mint condition with no rips or stains. I found three newly crafted fabric pumpkins and some autumn novelty fabric yardage to add to my fall decor, and a little fox planter that I think I'll use as a yarn bowl. This cardboard train case isn't really vintage, but it looks like it is. The inside is the right size to store buttons and threads f...

For a few years now I've been noticing slow-stitch supply vendors on Etsy offering blank stitch journals made out of batted muslin, felt or felted wool. I was tempted a few times to buy one so I could journal by embroidery, but they seemed so simple that I thought I could make one of my own. Fast forward to this spring, and the rapid deterioration on my one working hand due to arthritis has stolen the time I usually procrastinate about such ideas. I decided to invest in a book that would teach me about stitch journals and how to make them, which resulted in my purchase of Journal with Thread by Jessie Chorley. This is a very neat book, chock full of advice and ideas for hand stitchers like me. Here you can see the indepth explanations and sample pics of two different embroidery stitches. The author gives you step by step instructions on how to sew your own 8" X 8" stitch journal, and plenty of ideas on how to fill the pages with embroidery and appliques. ...

I'm almost ready to start work on designing my summer art quilt for 2025, which will be the pink-only Art quilter's bingo challenge quilt (say that ten times really fast, ha.) I usually make what I like during summer, as it's my favorite season and I tend to indulge myself, even with new projects. Projects I make from challenges or patterns, however, put me a bit more on edge. This t-shirt quilt turned out to be a bear to piece and quilt, but it's also become my favorite quilt to snuggle up with. I also really like how challenges inspire me. Making this quilt out of a one pound bundle of vintage fabrics chosen by someone else pushed me to consider how to use lace as fabric, with lovely results. My last one-color art quilt challenge helped me get over my hatred of yellow, so it's good for me (I still dislike it, but I'll use it now, versus completely avoiding it altogether.) I've had a long and unhappy history with the color pink, which I associa...

I burn through a lot of journals every year, and they're not getting any cheaper, so being able to thrift these four made me quite happy. Two are guided (the big goals on the left and the Be Happy second from the right) which just means they have prompts or questions to answer; the other two are blank. The cat cover journal is missing a few pages at the front; likely someone tore them out before donating it. I don't mind; this will make an excellent journal to carry in my purse. The Be Happy journal has a religious theme, which I also don't mind (you say God, I say Universe or Fate) and I like the theme; it's very upbeat. This might even be a gratitude journal, and it doesn't hurt to remember to be thankful. All the pages in the blue wrapped seahorse journal look like this. Love it. The goals journal has some funny and inspiring quotes on every left page, as well as list planner pages on the right. I like making goal lists so I might use t...

My first little project since finishing the last quilt was to turn these two hand-stitched quilted pieces from 14carrot into a cover for my journal, with the help of some thrifted fabric in a complimentary gingham check. I don't have a pattern I follow for journal covers; I just trace the silhouette of the journal onto the wrong side of the fabric, add a half-inch when I cut it, and insert some folded fabric in the ends to make sleeves and sew it right sides together with another piece of the same fabric. I usually put some batting in my covers, but since the quilted pieces were batted I felt like it would be too much. Once I had the cover stitched I then hand-stitched the two quilted pieces to the front and back, using a white thread that wouldn't be too noticeable. Here's the front of the finished journal cover. Here's the back. I stitched one of 14carrot's labels to the inside of the front sleeve to honor her contribution to the projec...

A few weeks ago I mentioned I'd packed a month of prompts into this jar to give me a daily nudge to do a little art, mainly painting. I wasn't happy with the first few pieces I did -- it's been a long time since I've painted anything -- but all I've done in the past is talk about painting again. I don't want to be all talk anymore, so I have kept at it. The prompts aren't difficult, for one thing; I just had to keep pushing myself until I liked it. Now every night I'm beginning to look forward to a little art time. I'm not always painting, either. For this prompt I was supposed to explore one of my favorite things from childhood (books, of course.) So I cobbled together a little book out of recycled paper and hand-wrote in it about how books saved me and changed my life. Nothing major, just a few sentences -- but it felt very good to remember what made me a writer. As for the painting I'm doing, I'm just letting myself...

The fabric journals I made this summer are going to be a lot of fun to work on, I can tell already. I like the loose/unbound pages best. Here are the first three I've done from the dark wood journal box. I dealt with the tea dripple on the inside of the back cover for my other fabric journal, too. I think this will be the last year I do something big and complicated for my summer art quilt project (and not only because I've run out of wall for them.) Time is a factor -- this summer's project took six weeks to complete, and about two hundred hours -- but so is my ability to hand stitch. My fingers are slowing down a lot, and they get tired easily. So working on smaller projects is more realistic, given my diminishing abilities. Doesn't mean I still can't have fun. :)

The first project I finished last month was this bag made from a strip of binding from my birthday scraps box. I'm really happy I also finished my thrifted fabric journal boxes project, which turned out better than I'd hoped. I made two fabric journals for my recycled boxes as well. The dark wood journal box is especially nice because when I want to do something small I can just take one of the cutter quilt pages right out of it and get to work. I finished my summer art quilt, too. It's probably the most abstract art quilt I've made, and a little strange, but then, so am I. :) Summer makes me happy, so I'm not surprised I was so productive. Onto September, and more fun.

Making the first fabric journal taught me that if I want a lot of pages I need to rethink the cover and binding. Then I thought of an index card journal I once made, and decided not to cover or bind the pages at all. I cut as many cutter quilt scraps as I could to fit inside the box, which was eighteen. The stack of pages. Everything fits beautifully inside the box, which now serves as the cover as well as the container. :)

For my first fabric journal I wanted to use cutter quilt scraps for the pages, so I cut a bunch of those to fit inside the cover I made. I then stitched the pages and the cover together in layers to see if that would work as a binding method. It worked, but due to the bulk I couldn't put as much as I'd wanted in the journal, and ended up with eight pages. My goal with using these fabric journals is to stitch on the pages, or mount small art textiles on them (probably both.) I even manage to christen the inside of the back cover with a splotch of dribbled tea. Oh, well -- it's the personal touch, right? The journal fits nicely into the box, with room to spare if I want to add more textile art or emphemera in the future.

The first fabric journal I'm making is for the red upcycled box with the primitive/tribal print embellishments. The fabric I used for the box came in a hand-dyed bundle from one of my favorite textile recycling sellers, and I've been saving it for a special project. The bold print has unusual colors, and although I rarely match things I decided to use the same fabric for my journal cover. Recycling is the basic theme of this project, so with the print I paired some cotton batting I harvested from a quilt end that came in my scraps box, and a piece of plain white scrap broadcloth for the inside cover. The interior of the box is 7" X 8", so I made the cover 13" X 15", which will give me a journal that is 6-1/2" X 7-1/2". Right now I'm quilting and beading the journal cover, and once that's done I'll sew in the pages.