Color Journals: Ocean blue for Lesa

I had so much fun working on Lesa's blue ocean-themed journal page. After I went to the SAQA meeting in March, I came home wanting to make some less useful strictly-for-aesthetics things, so I went small. I got caught in a frenzy of making artist trading cards and some really teeny "inchies", which are terrific with a pin glued on the back so you can wear them.

I had a little (maybe 7 x 7"?) scrap of a tropical islands/travel map fabric that I decided to slice up and inch-ify for Lesa's project. I sandwiched the scrap with a regular piece of batting and backing, did a quick simple meander, THEN I sliced the piece up and zig-zagged over every edge. Instead of making all the pieces the exact same size, I cut them in incremental widths like the pieces in a convergence quilt (Fun Trivia Fact: a convergence quilt was the first project I ever made in my Modern Era). After all the edge stitching was done, I added a little fraycheck to the corners and let them all dry overnight.

At this point, I had 25 miniature quilts that needed embellishment. One by one, taking great care to keep them in order so they could be reassembled onto the page, I added beads, pearls, shells, coral, angelina fibers, yarns, charms, sea glass, and some beautiful tiny bits of ocean-tumbled pottery. Some of the segments had only a single seed bead, but the overall effect was (in my opinion) like a Calvin & Hobbes title: There's Treasure Everywhere!

Once the inchies were finished, I prepared the main page. I used a piece of shimmery ocean blue fabric as the background, and I quilted wavy lines so that each piece would be framed. This took a little measuring effort and resulted in a scrapped first attempt. After the quilting was done, I layered a large piece of angelina fiber on the upper right of the page, and fused a fussy-cut fish from a different area of the same tropical print fabric. I added a little sparkle to the fish as well, but I fused him down BEFORE adding the inchies, to give the appearance of swimming behind the main work. To wrap it up I just glued the inchie segments in place and added a regular binding.

On the label, I copied a line from my favorite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke:

When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.

Lesa's journal page. Zoom in as much as you can -- there's so much to see on this one!

Upper-right detail of Lesa's page. I love the bubble bead on the fish, and the colors of the sea glass, coral, and pottery really vibrate. (Maybe you can barely make out the next one over on the left -- a tiny sand dollar!)

Center detail of Lesa's page. Fussy cut fishy swimming behind the inchies.

Tune in next month for the blue+neutral "daydreaming" page for Gerry...