September's JQ

The gaping hole that has been September has been taken up with completely empting my work room ready for a make-over! What a job it has been! I had no idea how much "stuff" I had accumulated and how much of it really needed to be thrown away. The problem is that when one starts to empty everything, you keep stopping - musing over what you find, asking oneself why on earth one bought it or marvelling that you still had some of that wonderful fabric you thought you'd finished! The books have been culled, some old favourites kept but the "how to" ones have gone to homes that still need them!
Most importantly I need to develop a new discipline about working once I'm back in my room - no point in all this pain if I can't maintain a tidier, more organised space! Those who know me well will realise what a steep learning curve this will be and probably believe that in 6 months it will be as untidy as before! In part it is that I usually have two or three different pieces of work on the go at any one time - an "art quilt" project, a hand stitched piece that I can watch TV doing and a bog standard one for friends children/grandchildren! So unless I'm very disciplined they are all out cluttering the place!

I have finally completed the September JQ, it is certainly of a better standard than August but I think June is the best of this quartet.
While the room is being done, I will have to plan the next 4 JQs - all needing to include buttons! There are gremlins in the machine and photos will not load at all - I'll try to add them later. 12-10-11 Photo finally added!

Planning September's JQ

This will be the last of the compulsory text JQs and after my poor showing in August I need to be more on the button this month.
I'm going to experiment with freehand stitched text all over the background and then look at the different effects I can achieve over this.
My first samples have involved layering screen printed text on voile on my background in small areas and then machine stitching the text through the layers.

Once I had stitch the whole sample I then used a craft hot gun to burn away areas of the voile to give a distressed impression. This technique needs practice, 1st one was scorched, I now know because I has not cut into the voile to make melting faster.

Finally I used some acrylic paint through a freezer paper stencil and used a running stitch to outline them.

August JQ

This is the least effective of this year's JQs - I have done so many samples but never quite achieved the effects I wanted.

The weaving is more successful and including some text within it did begin to give some impression of an old wall but I them tried adding some markal to tone down some of the background, not very successfully!I'm also not happy with my cutting of text stencils, this needs a great deal more practice if I'm to use it in any larger work.
Glad its done and please to now be working a different direction to produce the last text JQ for September!
It will stretch my patience this month as I'm in the middle of emptying my workroom so that I can have a new floor(one I can sweep and wipe!), new storage and a paint job - so "camping" out in any space I can!