Even though I already dropped off my bookmarks at the arts council, I keep making more! Maybe these can be given to friends and family for Christmas. I decided to take a step back to working with only fabric for these - no paper or glueing involved. I didn't even use fusible webbing - just layered wavy strips of various white and sheer fabrics in horizontal lines and stitched them all down. The one on the left shows the resulting plain strip. On the next one, I added a stitched tree and a cardinal and hearts from the red paper-cloth. On the third, the tree was made of three pieces of 4-ply yarn held down with free-motion stitching. I also added a red paper-cloth bird. With this technique, there is not as much opportunity to add stamping or writing, since most of it is not natural fibers and won't take the inks well. But maybe they don't need anything more. They do take longer to make than the ones I made last week; they're really individualized and made one at a time.
After I cut those three strips, I realized I had a piece that was just the right size for a sketchbook page. I stitched on another yarn tree and added the cardinal. While I was at it, I trimmed down all the other sketchbook pages to the exact size and restitched the cut edges. In looking through them all, I realized they might correspond to the months of the year. I would have to make another winter page for February, as well as pages for December and September (this one would be the first page in the book - January). I still have almost two months before this needs to be in the mail, so it's quite possible I could complete those. I also realized I really like the few that have words on them. I'm considering writing short poems to go with more of them and adding them onto the page somehow. I also need to decorate the cover and write an artist statement to be included in the book. I think I'm going to attach them to the cover by adding two grommets at the top of each page and putting two rings through them all. The book could still be folded shut and is the same size as the original journal, only thicker. You would open it and then turn the pages up, rather than right to left. I hope that works!
Even though I already dropped off my bookmarks at the arts council, I keep making more! Maybe these can be given to friends and family for Christmas. I decided to take a step back to working with only fabric for these - no paper or glueing involved. I didn't even use fusible webbing - just layered wavy strips of various white and sheer fabrics in horizontal lines and stitched them all down. The one on the left shows the resulting plain strip. On the next one, I added a stitched tree and a cardinal and hearts from the red paper-cloth. On the third, the tree was made of three pieces of 4-ply yarn held down with free-motion stitching. I also added a red paper-cloth bird. With this technique, there is not as much opportunity to add stamping or writing, since most of it is not natural fibers and won't take the inks well. But maybe they don't need anything more. They do take longer to make than the ones I made last week; they're really individualized and made one at a time.
After I cut those three strips, I realized I had a piece that was just the right size for a sketchbook page. I stitched on another yarn tree and added the cardinal. While I was at it, I trimmed down all the other sketchbook pages to the exact size and restitched the cut edges. In looking through them all, I realized they might correspond to the months of the year. I would have to make another winter page for February, as well as pages for December and September (this one would be the first page in the book - January). I still have almost two months before this needs to be in the mail, so it's quite possible I could complete those. I also realized I really like the few that have words on them. I'm considering writing short poems to go with more of them and adding them onto the page somehow. I also need to decorate the cover and write an artist statement to be included in the book. I think I'm going to attach them to the cover by adding two grommets at the top of each page and putting two rings through them all. The book could still be folded shut and is the same size as the original journal, only thicker. You would open it and then turn the pages up, rather than right to left. I hope that works!
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