Journal quilts

I am taking a set of classes at the quilt store 'The Quilted Daisy' on journal quilts. The idea is that you make a small quilt - no bigger than A4 - a month and it records what you were thinking about or looking at that month. The classes are aimed at teaching the techniques to be used for this and we are encouraged to get away from traditional quilting and use any materials that suggest themselves and any form of stitching. You can read more about this here

http://www.quiltart.com/

Here are my first efforts for February.
The small one is a postcard version to send to my quilting friends, Under the Edge Quilters, back home.

The trouble with all this is that I don't think of this as quilting at all but rather as free machine embroidery. I have to keep quiet about this when I am in class and it really doesn't matter as long as I enjoy doing it and I am learning and being inspired. I have been playing with a lot of these techniques for some time but have never really had a focus for my efforts. So here goes - one a month for the next year!