An art journal (of sorts)!

Ah fabric, whilst I love paper and paint and ink, nothing quite has the tactile touch of fabric, it's stroke-ability, it's softness and the way it bends and moves, I love it all.  I have been known when stressed to go to a fabric shop and just look and occasionally stroke the fabric and I can feel my stress levels reducing (I know I could do the same with the cats mind you but they run away).

As you know I've had these strips of fabric bundles knocking around for ages, impulse buy at a craft show and then sit in a box for AGES and I've had this idea to make a fabric book from them for AGES as well, so last weekend when I really should have been packing for our annual friends trip to Center Parcs I made this.

Basically I sewed the strips of fabric onto some felt, just the regular size from HobbyCraft, it gives great weight and pliability to the finished piece without making it too stiff.  

Once they were all attached (or so I thought) I then added loads of extra layers with embellishments to the outer cover. Silk rods, silk waste, boucle thread and ribbon.  

Lots and lots of sewing in different coloured cotton going backwards and forwards to really secure the silk waste which can be a bit fluffy and flyaway.  A lot of the cotton I've got is variegated and it really throws up some depth of colour if you keep sewing backwards and forwards.

I also added some stamping both directly on the background and on scraps of fabric that I sewed on.  

Wanted to get a real scrappy collage effect so no straight sewing, lots of loose threads and no neatening of edges!

The inner cover is the same but with no embellishments.

The "pages" are calico, double thickness and just sewn round the edge with whatever cotton thread was left on the machine.  I had some cut offs left so made smaller tag like pages to go in between the big pages with some tabs. Sewed the pages to the inner cover and then sewed the outer to the inner round the edge.

As a trial piece it's ok, it proved the idea "works".  When I make the next one I will do a couple of things differently: I'll neaten the edges of the covers more, I'll make sure each strip of fabric is attached to the other (there are some gaps in the sewing and you can see the background felt), 

The inner pages I'll think a bit differently about.  I'll either sew the inner pages properly (I was rushing) with a hem and turn them inside out and top stitch round the edges to make neater edges or just use a zigzag close the the edge of the pages to stop the large amounts of fraying that will happen.

So what am I going to put in it? Well I think it's going to be my Lynne Perrella tag book, a go to when my mojo goes for a wander.  I'll stamp the calico with some background stamps in Archival to decorate those and then either a paper or fabric tag (stiffened) using one of the many Lynne stamps from PaperArtsy ( and as there are more coming out soon ...).  It will allow me to try out different techniques and the different size pages means I can use different size tags as well.

Hope you all have a great weekend "making".  My weekend will consist  of unpacking from our week away (Center Parcs, can't beat it even if I was ill), some rugby, looking after my husband (who looked after me great when I was ill on hols) who has a cold and of course some crafting. 

hugs

jo

xx