Books

Seems to be "Another Friday, another workshop" recently. My friend, Brenda persuaded me to sign up to a monthly workshop in Wimborne with a textile artist and teacher Tricia Forshaw and I should have gone last month, except I was on holiday when the classes started.  The theme for the workshops is on textile books, although I had a list of things to take having not seen what I would be doing it was a bit of a mystery and I hadn't seen Brenda for a while to find out more.

Yesterday Tricia demonstrated how to make a book with Japanese binding and I was also shown how to make a traditional book binding (which was shown in the last class).  Soon I was working on making my own book

I has drawing paper pages and pelmet Vilene end papers.  Under that was some free machining to be used as a cover which would be stitched onto the top half of the end paper and covered over with the other half.  I was getting into my stride when people started packing up at 3.30 - I could have carried on a bit longer :o( .  So I had to wait until last night to carry on with what I was doing.  I cut the sewing up to size and stitched around to join the end paper and couched some glittery thread around the edge

Not quite blingy enough and so I added on my little sticky dots.  Lesson learned here was to make the cover and attach to half the end paper before making up a book, much easier I think than adding after the book is made.  But hey, that's the fun of learning!

With the notes and from what I remembered from yesterday this morning I started on another book.  A lot of craft magazines that feature papercrafts will often have patterned papers as a free gift and I used the papers from a Handmade magazine from some months back.  I don't have any mount board so I improvised using a double layer of cardboard from a Shredded Wheat pack rescued from recycling. This is what I started off with

I made the white spotty front cover before supermarket shopping to leave to dry and the red one for the back after.  This afternoon I cut the papers for the book and trimmed them with my wavy rotary cutter blade.  Following the instructions for binding I used some perle thread in blue.  Here's the completed book

Although I had a bash at this in paper because I have it to hand, I will have a go at a fabric one soon, I think I might have impressed myself with this little effort.

Earlier this week I was lucky enough to get one of my daughter's cast offs, she's just replaced her phone and I've got her old one (autumn leaves, they almost match my blog!)

With a lovely holographic butterfly cover.  I've wanted an i-phone for a while, but couldn't justify the cost of getting one.  I was getting frustrated my "smartphone" as I could usefully put any apps on as it kept running out of memory.  Got a new sim and will be able to transfer my number soon, meanwhile I can boast that I've got 2 phone for now!

Done and just about to go in the post on Monday are these lovelies

Churn Dash blocks for Sarah of Sew Me for her Siblings Together Quilts. I hope she likes them.

Have a good weekend.