Accordion Journals and other books

I’ve been trying to get on with some stitched fragments for my accordion memory journals for a while.

Firstly, the Kew Gardens journal. My plan is for this to document the visit I made at the end of July and focus mostly on the incredible Chihuly glass exhibition. I have a list of ideas for pages and started the title page last week which is part of a leaflet backed on a piece of calico. I’ve put a line of whipped running stitch through the middle of the letters and am outlining them in back stitch.

Outlining finished and beading started. I am really pleased with the effect of the random blue bugle beads over the stems and am looking for some iridescent seed beads that I know I have somewhere for some of the teardrop shaped ends.

The Anderby Creek journal from the end of March has also finally been started with a scrap of crinkled fabric which I love for its suggestion of ripples in sand and a holed oyster shell. I attached the shell to the fabric with long stitches through the holes which I then buttonhole stitched over to make buttonhole bars.

I wanted a bobbly effect like seaweed, so I used cast-on stitch pulled round to make little circles along the length of the buttonhole bar.

Completed and stitched into place in the journal. One page completed, seven to go!

Last summer my middle one bought a Tintin t-shirt from a lovely shop in Durham when we were on holiday and to her delight, it came in a paper carrier with a bold graphic of Tintin and Snowy on each side. I think she liked that as much as the t-shirt and I promised to make her a notebook from it. I bought some Tintin postcards to use as the covers and finally a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to get on and make it.

I laminated two pairs of postcards back to back for the covers.

Then I carefully cut up the bag so I could use every bit of the graphics and the Tintin wording up the sides.

I had to add an extra piece of paper from a 1970s educational poster (The Pied Piper of Hamelin to be exact) to make the signatures even,

…but I was pleased that I managed to include all of the main panels of the bag.

I used waxed white polyester thread and Coptic Stitch to bind the book.

Finally a job off the list and a daughter delighted.

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I made a rubbish book!

Well, effectively, that’s what it’s made from! I really enjoyed making my Eden project paper carrier and chocolate box book last year and when I went to a local food and drink fair last November I earmarked the advertising postcard and another carrier for the same treatment. I cut the postcard in half for the covers…

…and sliced up the carrier into signatures.

And then Christmas happened and it got well and truly shuffled aside until yesterday when I needed to turn some work I’d done with a group of children into little books using Coptic binding. I had five to do, so another one wasn’t going to make much difference, so here it is, finally finished:

 

I’m really pleased with the chain stitches across the spine.

 

 

No idea what I’m going to do with it now I’ve made it, of course…!

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Bubbles book charm

This piece of gilding metal was stuck with round stickers and then run through the rolling mill to impress the pattern into it. They turned out oval, but I love the effect; like a scattering of bubbles.

Halved, drilled, corners smoothed round and polished into book boards.

A tiny book…

…with hand dyed silk pages…

…and coptic stitch binding in hand-dyed orange silk thread.

Then the closure.

A pop of bright blue from a coco shell disc bead held in place with a striped seed bead and finished with a gold coloured jump ring as a bale.

And in comparison with a penny (same size as a cent).

I also started the grid book charm with pages of a very loose hand dyed cheesecloth cotton in purple and green.

Unfortunately the very loose nature of the fabric made it really difficult to get the tension of the binding right, the fabric pulled into holes in places and the stitching inside was really untidy.

So despite the beauty of the fabric, back to the drawing board for this one. Indigo dyed cotton I think, for mark 2.

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Silk and gilding metal book locket

Right back at the beginning of my jewellery making course we impressed some gilding metal with various textured items. I had some success using a heavily stitched commercial fabric, ending up with these three pieces.

I decided to try and make the two smaller pieces into covers for some sort of book locket or charm and started drilling holes (not very evenly!) in one edge of each for the stitching.

Having enjoyed using fabric for the pages of the books I made at the start of the year, I opted for three fragments of pure silk; two in coppery tones and one bright turquoise blue, with the stitching thread to tone.

Once the holes were drilled, including one for a bead closure, I filed the corners round and put the boards in the barreller to polish them up.

Knowing how quickly any copper based alloy dulls, I gave them both a coat of clear nail varnish – not very orthodox, but it works! Then I could start constructing the book. Not easy when you compare the size of the finished item to a penny.

I used a coptic stitch for the binding and really enjoyed the way it worked up, with little chains of hand dyed waxed silk thread across the spine…

…and neat rows of back stitch in the centre of the pages.

The closure is a natural turquoise bead held with a gold seed bead and a tail of the same thread as I used to stitch the binding…

…which simply wraps around the book and winds around the turquoise nugget to hold it closed.

It really is a dear little thing and the coptic stitch works perfectly. I just need to drill a hole in the top back corner and add a jump ring so it can be added to a chain or bracelet.

And don’t forget, there is still time to enter my blog anniversary giveaway

                                          to win my lilac sea glass piece here

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