journal quilts and papermaking

Every month I make at least one journal quilt. This month the total is three :-). A couple of weeks ago I saw a hedgehog walking through my garden. For me it was the first one I saw in years, but looking at the reaction of my cats, they have seen them more often. The picture above shows the footprints of a hedgehog.

The coming months I am participating in a journal quilt challenge organised by Suzanne. The theme for September is: 'Nature, your view'. For this challenge I am using one of the journal quilts I started in Dijanne Cevaal's workshop. Both journal quilts I started that day are now finished, including binding, sleeve and label. The one at the right is the one I am using for this challenge. Both journal quilts represent the fruiting body of the Fatsia Japonica.





And the last picture for today are some paper sheets I made yesterday. This time I used an aluminium mesh and this worked much better for getting the pulp out of the water than insect screen material. I added some Procion dye powder to the pulp, that is the reason that my paper is a bit pink/red.

paper making and fibre paper

For my c&g course I had to make paper. It was the first time that I did this and I must say it is a fun technique. I presoaked all kind of snippets of paper for a day, blended it this morning and use insect screen material to lift the pulp out of the container. This is probably not the most suitable material for it, but I could not find a metal screen for this. The pictures show two examples. On the one on the left I sprinkled some petals on the pulp, but unfortunately they did not make enough contact with the paper. On the one on the right I sprinkled the contents of a teabag when the pulp was wet. Luckily today was sunny so I could put everything outside to dry.
Another thing I did today was to make fibre paper. I used merino rovings in different colors and added decorative yarn and metallic thread in between the two layers. This is a bit difficult to see on the pictures, but believe me, it is there :-). As a 'glue' I used wall paper paste.