Journalling and crazy quilting

Following on from the journalling post the other day I have found some time to work on the colour studies suggested by Sharon. The instruction was to gather 1" squares of a predominant colour, a different colour each day to reflect your feelings on that day.

The first day I did this it was dull and rainy so I decided to scour my magazines for shades of grey. I tried to look for all types of grey - red grey, blue greys, green greys........

The next day I looked at complimentaries on the colour wheel - yellow and violet. I found it harder to find samples of these two colours in the magazines.

It may be because of the ramshackle way I had cut out the pieces but I didn't particularly like the block arrangement on the right hand side. I preferred the slightly staggered arrangement on the left.

Instead of using magazines clippings on the third day I went through my stack of painted and mixed media surfaces as well as photographs and cut squares of all the reds I could find. On the page I arranged them from (warm) yellow reds through to (cold) blue reds. Hopefully that comes over in the pic above. I think I can see I was feeling brighter because the sun was put, hence the red.

My fourth choice, on another bright, blowy day, was shades of green, again taken from my stash of painted/textured papers, photos, handmade paper and the fabric they use to make hats! This time I arranged the greens from light (maybe more yellowy) to dark (more blue or red) greens.

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I still have one more day to do this exercise and then have to take it further by matching to fabrics and threads.

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A few days ago Lesley blogged about a crazy quilt base she had prepared. You may remember that Kate sent me a bag of scraps which I was desperate to play with and, inspired by Lesley, yesterday I had a play. I was too impatient to turn lots of little edges so I bondawebbed the pieces to a square of cotton, leaving the edges raw.

I don't think the colours above are too accurate as the whole assemblage is a little more into the orange/brown spectrum. My plan is to maybe free machine all ove to hold everything together and then to use embroidery and beads to decorate. I may not get back to this piece for a few weeks but at least I now have a piece ready to pick up whenever I feel inclined.