Fabric Journal Pages

My Surface Design group is doing a Journal Page swap . For the first several rounds we are using the seasons as our theme. Our first season was spring. Lately, many of us in this group have been wondering if winter will EVER leave!!!

My swap partner for the Spring page was Jan Z. from Wisconsin. It turns out that Jan is a Master Gardener, along with being a very experienced Fiber artist and Quilter. It was nice to have the gardening passion in common with her. Her fiber art skills far exceed my own but we all love to learn by doing and to learn from each other.

Last week, I received this beautiful page in the mail from Jan. The photo does not do it justice! It is full of texture and layers of color. She used bleach to discharge the colors from the fabric for the white flowers and added embroidery and bead work. The bottom has a wonderful piece of bark cloth- made from bark fiber - added to it and in amongst the fibers she added some real seeds just waiting to be awakened by the spring sun and rain!!!

This is the front of the page. (each page measures 6 inches by 6 inches).

On the back of the page, Jan added details for how she created this wonderful page and told me a bit about her creative journey! It is such fun getting to know all of these wonderful artists that I would never have a chance to get to know if not for the Internet!!

I have created my first fabric journal page and it will be sent on it's way to Jan, in the morning.

These photos are a bit dark. I found that if I used the flash, there would be too much reflective glare from the transparency and the Lumiere paints (they contain mica powder) and lots of detail would be lost. So I opted for darker pictures with more details available for viewing. I printed some of my own photographs onto fabric with my new Epson C-88 color printer- as recommended by artist Lesley Riley and purchased fro me by my wonderful husband!! 9 He just loves having new electronic toys in the house!!!) I added a piece of hand painted fabric and some beading to enhance and add details and printed a phrase on a strip of transparency to place across the bottom of the pansies. It says the Smiling Faces of Spring. pansies are simply one of my favorite flowers and mine are thriving this year in the cool weather that we have been having.

This is the back of my page for Jan. As we got to know each other through e-mails, I discovered that she loves tulips. The upper Midwest got blasted this year by late deep freezes and snow and she fears that she has lost all of her tulips for this year. So on the back of her page i put photos of tulips for her to enjoy. We also got late snow and freezing blasts but My tulips managed to hang in there and have been beautiful- till last night when they got pulverized by the winds from this Nor'easter!!! To this side I added more hand painted fabric, a mother of pearl button some pink dotted Swiss fabric with beads and some stamped butterflies. Before I mail this page off, I will sign and date the back side.

I am very excited about this ongoing project! I have gotten the name of my trade partner for the summer page and I am looking forward to working on it.

I am not sure yet how I am going to bind these pages together. I may add a narrow strip of fabric to each side of each page and then fold it up accordian style; or I may add fabric tabs with grommmets to each left hand side and then tie the pages together. I am sure that all will become clear as the project evolves and as I get ideas from other artists who are participating in this swap!!