Debbie’s mailable journal

This was my last piece for someone else’s travelling book before we started a new journey and Debbie’s brief was to create something to do with letters.

I already had a piece of embellished sheet music left over from a workshop we did last year with Fran Holmes. The bigger piece had gone to cover the steampunk journal I made for a friend’s wedding…

 

…and I had the smaller piece left, which I had started to cover in seed stitch.

I finished the seed stitch, which was a bit of a marathon to say the least,

and as the finished piece was nicely sturdy, with layers of fusible vilene, thick paper, chiffon and heavy stitching, I decided to turn it into the cover of a journal which could be sent as a letter. I took the idea from a book I’d recently bought and for card and paper substituted fused fabric and kimono silk.

I fused a piece of chiffon to the back to stabilise the stitching when I cut it and also to neaten it off a bit.

Then I cut three sets of pages from vintage Japanese kimono silk…

…and pamphlet stitched them into the cover, which I had already cut to shape.

The left flap folds under and the tapered section on the right slots into the slit on the left.

I copied the instructions to go with the journal and made an envelope for it to go into using a photocopied piece of the instructions which hadn’t printed properly.

Next was the bag. Debbie had made a bag for her travelling book to go in at the beginning of the project, when we all had nice slim books. Three rounds later there was no way her book was going back into the bag, so she asked me to alter the bag as if it was an envelope that had been to and fro through the postal system.

I used some postal themed rubber stamps and found some slightly shiny fabric which looks a bit like parcel tape, slit the bag up the sides and started to add sections of the parcel tape fabric to enlarge the bag. Then I stamped all over the front and back and stitched it all together.

Now I need to put another piece into my own journal before it wanders off on another round of travels.

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Turquoise fused fabric – a new commission

I’ve been asked to create two canvases with a neutral coloured background and a turquoise colour scheme featuring hearts. To give some interest to the hearts, I decided to create some more fused fabric.

This one started with a base of dark teal green satin, sprinkled with various threads, sequins, beads, ribbon etc, layered with Bondaweb and then covered with a piece of shot rose and turquoise organza.

 

 

 

For the next one, I went for a lighter background as contrast, this time using a piece of brushed cotton with an interesting hand dyed pattern for my base and a piece of vintage pale blue chiffon scarf as the final layer.

And for the final piece, back to the dark satin, but this time with a chiffon final layer.

Now onto the fun of choosing the threads, beads etc. to embellish the design.

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