Travelling Book

Last year, I joined a local textiles group.  We meet once a month and usually have a speaker or we take a project we’re working on plus some finished projects for “ Show & Tell”.  Each year, they run a Travelling Books scheme.  Each participant has their own A5 -sized book which is passed around the group of six ladies and each month a new piece of textile art is added to the book.  Since I was new to the group, I had also to make a bag for the book to travel in, plus I could decorate the front of the book too.

First, I made my bag using some lovely cat print fabric.  I used my embroidery attachment on my machine to embroider my name before assembling the bag the same as I did here.

Next, for the front cover.  I had kept the off-cuts from my festive table runner so I sewed them together to make a mini-quilt and edged it with binding.  To decorate it, I stamped the images from Visible Image Destination Unknown onto white cotton backed with Bondaweb.  I thought this stamp set was perfect for a travelling book as I hope to discover and explore new techniques from my book’s journey.  After fussy-cutting them, I fused them into place and then embellished with some machine embroidery.  The quilt was attached to the book cover using silicone glue.

I then though, why not decorate the fly-leaf with the same stamps?!  After completing the stamping and drawing in some faux stitching, I remembered that I had an Aal & Create Compass stencil which would also fit my theme perfectly so I blended rainbow colours through that.

Finally, it was time to create my actual project.  My inspiration was 2-fold; firstly, my theme was to be cats since I share my home with 4 felines.  Secondly, my friend, Katharine, who is also in the group, is also a card maker and she uses her stamps in her travelling books projects, embroidering them.  I didn’t have time for hand embroidery so decided to stamp onto patterned fabric, cut out, bond onto the background then use free-motion machine embroidery. My favourite cat, from Stampers Anonymous Snarky Cats was chosen for this project.  I mounted it in a frame to keep the fabric as taut as possible whilst sewing.  This is him once the embroidery was finished.

To finish the panel, I die-cut a heart and free-motion embroidered that on.  For the lettering, I sketched it in with a heat-erasable pen then free-motion machined that too.  I wanted it to look a bit grungy to match the cat.  The background is an old wash-basket liner (washed, of course!) that I kept as it was a reasonable sized piece of fabric.

My book is now off on its travels and I’m now working on my project for the next lady’s book.  I think the Snarky Cats might be making another appearance.