Wednesday 30 August 2006

People of the World Altered Book

I belong to ABEurope at yahoo. We are just starting a "My Own Theme" round robin, and my theme is "People of the World". I created a machine embroidery of a Japanese lady for the cover of my book. I used some sheet fabric and used bondaweb (I think it is called wundaweb in the States) to "glue" it to some quilting "stuff" and then bonded that to a bottom layer of sheet fabric. The design is from a source book that I have. I scanned it and printed it. I pinned it to the back of the sandwich and sewed through it.

So far, so good. I had to do the face by hand, the machine didn't do the trick.

Once I had completed the machine emboridery, I cut all the under layers off and used satin stitch to fix it to the cover. It was much too wrinkly and ....



sewing the lady onto the cover made it shrink. (That is my story and I'm sticking to it, I did measure and cut correctly). So, I had to add some more to the bottom of the book and then a strap to join it at the inside of the book.



Anyway, I decided early this morning that I hate it. I decided to glue a new cover to the book, chop the lady off the old one and fix it to the new one.

So, where am I right now?

The new cover is glued on, the lady is in a box in my bookcase and I may add her to the cover later when I can show her to an expert friend of mine who can advise me. I'll post photos of the current cover tomorrow.

Update

This is the completed front cover:


I am very lucky to have a Craft Robo - a printer which cuts. I used it to create the letters on the inside of the front cover.



And this is the opposite page.



I have had these images from Iran for 33 years, and I am so glad to have found a proper home for them.




Sunday 13 August 2006

Purse for Ash

I did a few evening classes in machine embroidery last winter. I'll showcase some of that work is this blog later. In the mean time, Ash in the USA is hosting a swap. I made this purse for her in lieu of postage.

Unfortunately the scans make it look grubby. The thread is gold metallic and the fabric is silk dupion. Both of which are more vibrant in real life.




Monday 7 August 2006

Various




The one above was created by drawing the lines with two pens at the same time. I do rather like it.



I've just treated myself to some twinkling H2Os. The examples immediately above and below have backgrounds done with the twinklers. Great paints.



And now I revert to my pshychedelic phase!




The secret is to sleep well and dream of fairies floating in the wind. The fairies will bring you good luck. Fairies sleep on gossamer thread. Fairies dream.



The one above is called "calm".

Join the dots - Magic Marker



A bit over the top!

doodles

I've just got into doodling via the yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Inklin/. Great fun and really relaxing. Here are some of my efforts.

This one is a "true" doodle because it is in one of my notebooks. We were set a challenge in the group to "join the dots", so, I set up a number of dots and joined them.