I’m sure somebody has probably already thought of this, but it occurred to me a while ago that the cuff of a shirt would make a wonderful textile book cover, easily stitched into to bind the pages and using the button for a closure. I made some notes in my sketchbook and got quite excited to start one!
Typically, it was months before a shirt destined for the bin came my way. This was a badly damaged denim shirt from the art shirts box in my classroom which I brought home to wash at Easter. I eagerly snipped off the cuffs and started to play. I went for some applique first as I wanted something which would make up quickly.
The fabric for the leaves is scraps of embroidered silk dupion which I’ve attached with feather stitch in a lovely variegated fine cotton.
I also had some matching embroidered silk organza scraps, so I layered a couple of the leaves with some of the organza.
A line of feather stitch, lengthened with back stitches, makes the central veins and holds the organza pieces down.
For the second one, a random scattering of lazy daisy flowers in various shades of blue.
It’s a great project to use up oddments of pretty papers. These are ready to be stitched in. I’m going for three signatures per book held with a beaded long stitch binding.
It’s always an added pleasure when an idea works out so nicely.
Under A Topaz Sky 
What an innovative bit of re-purposing. I haven’t seen this done before and it looks so pretty.
It has turned out very well, hasn’t it – a good idea!
What a lovely, useful, permanent reminder of some garment that is beyond the charity shop that you struggle to part with.
hiya alex,i make cuff books too, and we are both in north Lincolnshire, but I use cloth pages, have a look at my blog sweetypie50.blogspot,com, I got the idea from jill dian izzard- shes a whizz at cloth books, I love the compactness of them, maybe we could meet up sometime and compare notes, have fun, tina
what a brilliant idea and one that I’ve never come across before….you have embroidered it beautifully too
You have taken so much care with the embroidery….its beautiful.
A lovely idea….