Cloth Book Number Two

This second Fabric Art Journal has a buttoned spine and the pages are made individually.

See the buttons on the left hand side which go right through the spine and are stitched to more matching buttons on the back.

The cover wraps around the pages and the edges are finished with zigzag stitches.

If you remember when we made roses from organza ribbon you may recognise these because that is what I have used as a decoration for the front.

Add as much or as little as you want.

The inside covers can also be decorated but I haven't done that on this book.

 Here are two of the inside pages which are decorated with the Suffolk Puffs I brought in to show the Quilting Arts group.

The smaller ones on the right hand side were meant to be included in a Journal Quilt but it went wrong so I cut it up and used just the bits I liked in this Cloth Book.

Perhaps you remember some of the printed images on fabric which I brought in. 

Here I have used Bondaweb to fuse the butterfly and the rose to some fabric which contrasts with the pages.  Then this is stitched on to the fabric page.

The pages are padded and after decoration are sewn wrong sides together and neatened around the edges by hand or by machine.

The yo-yos or Suffolk Puffs were sewn to the page using the buttons in the centre.

An even number of pages are made individually at first, then sewn back to back with wadding in-between and neatened with stitching around the edges.

Everything shown here using machine stitching could also be done by hand.

The unicorns are some machine embroidered embroideries which I did ages ago and never used for their original purpose.  I embroidered them on organza in variegated embroidery thread.  Now they have a use at last and as you can see some of the silk roses we made some time ago are used as an additional feature on this last page.

 In this photo of the cover you can see the small metal clips holding everything together and level so that as the buttons are sewn on the whole thing will end up symmetrical.

After making the pages and preparing the cover I discovered that I had put the decorations too close to the spine edge and would have lost some of my fancy bits when I sewed the buttons through it all.  So the amendment I had to make was to join some extra fabric to the inside edges where I would be sewing through the cover and pages and adding the buttons to join it all together.

Although at the time I was annoyed with myself for making this mistake I realised afterwards that it was a good idea because the thinner centre made sewing it all together much easier.

There is a full worksheet written up and to be circulated at Quilting Arts or by email.