Sunday, 20 April 2003

In addition to this site, I've started keeping a small album to document my quilty projects. For each finished project, I take a picture and put it in the album along with swatches of the fabric that was used in the quilt and a brief description. This way, when I eventually start giving quilts away, I'll have a handy record of the quilts I've made for anyone who's visiting my quilting corner and is curious.

Can I be nosey and ask what your album looks like? I used to keep a pretty, archive quality album of various creative projects with notes, but it really stressed me out because I could never keep it nice and neat looking -- my swatches would make the binding bulge, and sometimes I would want to add comments later, which would mess up the layout. Also, I would sometimes avoid putting a project in the album because that itself became another creative task demanding my time, one that became increasingly oppressive. And I was never sure what to do about projects that I abandoned or ideas I was considering.

So I switched to the other extreme. I now use composition notebooks -- my current one has a bunch of blank pages ripped out (to make it lie flat) and duct tape on the cover (which I use as a template for one project). I staple my swatches in, and use a glue stick to glue in photos and other tid-bits -- it's totally not archival quality. I record completed projects, abandonded projects, sketches for new projects -- absolutely everything is in it.

But I'm still not happy with it. Now I'm irritated by it because it's so messy looking. I can't seem to produce something that is neat, useful and complete.

So how do you do it?

      Quilty comment by Katxena on 20 April 2003

Well, I'm not being very ambitious. First, I'm not trying to do anything archive quality, and I'm constraining it by only documenting actually finished projects. No projects in waiting or partially-finished projects (those will be written about here). Next time I'm taking pictures, I'll get a picture of one of the album pages -- it's really nothing special: quilt name, pattern, date, and disposition, random swatches of fabrics (loosely taped to the page), and a photograph of the front of the quilt.

      Quilty comment by Uncorked on 21 April 2003

I've been working on a quilt journal as well. Unfortunately I lost pictures for half my quilts because they were digital and we lost them in a careless computer upgrade.

My journal is of finished projects as well... using a Creative Memories album. I intend to put small fabric swatches on a card that can be attached to the page and removed later if I need to find the material again. I try to include one over all picture and a couple of detailed pictures. I leave room for comments about the quilt. For works in progress and ideas for future projects I use a sketchbook/journal. I also take this same book to classes for taking notes as well.
Creative memories also has "portrait sleeves" that can be inserted in between pages. You can use these clear sleeves to store notes and sketches of the project if you would like ...just an idea. :>

      Quilty comment by Wendy on 23 August 2004

I finished another one block practice quilt today. I was trying another version of the bear paws/bear claws block (at a different size) to see if I could get it to come out any better. I think it did come out a bit better. This one was also done in flannel (just for something different.) I'm still not happy with the binding or quilting (it all seems sloppy to me), but each one is slightly better than the previous, so I guess that's the best I can hope for.

I like this Christmas Claws.. This would be wonderful as pillow covers. I'm going to have to try this myself..

      Quilty comment by Kathy Pollock on 3 July 2003