I enjoyed making the six books for the Roxy sister's Journal of Stitchery Volume 9 so much that I decided to carry on making little textile books. From this point forward they may not always be exactly the same size but for this first one I kept to 3.5" wide and 4.5" tall.
The cover for this book is a piece of a quilt I bought in a little kit from a gal who was destashing on YouTube (Uniquely Yours by Dawn Marie). I've been collecting bits of crochet and lace along with vintage handkerchiefs from various sources. The focal point on this cover was cut from a corner of one of those hankies. I outlined stitched it with a size 12 perle cotton.
Turn over the piece of wide white lace to find one of Cicely Mary Barker's flower fairies. They were available as small panels on quilter's cotton some years ago. The light pink at the left side is the folded edge of a handkerchief you'll see later in the book. I decorated it with a strip of lace and left it loose as well. I seed stitched the background with some tiny upright crosses with a Sulky 12 weight thread.
The next page is another corner from another hankie. I added a few embroidery stitches around the perimeter with a size 12 perle cotton and did some random quilting in the interior. There's a piece of batting between this page and the flower fairy to give the hankie some substance. The embroidered flowers on the right were on a vintage hand towel. I fussy cut them, raw edge appliqued them in place, and then couched a lightweight trim over the cut edges.
For the center spread I cut a piece of a fairly new cotton print. The large flowers were cut from one hankie and the smaller ones from a different hankie. The butterfly is wooden. It has a low profile and is lightweight. The patch is from snugglymonkey.com.
Most of the violets on the left hand page of this spread came from one hankie. The darker violets came from another hankie. The right hand page is the pink hankie I referred to earlier. I folded it in half (using only half of the whole square hankie) to create the base for this page, lining up the crochet edges as closely as I could. The big pink rose is a commercial applique, the flower next to it is from yet another handkerchief. There's another dark violet and a strip of wedding trim along the top. I seed stitched this page with more tiny upright crosses. This page has batting between the two sides as this hanky was also very thin. It began life as a plain white handkerchief; Dawn Marie hand dyed it for me.
Here you have the other side of the pink hankie, more wedding trim, and more flowers cut from vintage handkerchiefs. The background areas are quilted with a pink Sulky12 thread. Opposite the hankie we have the other half of the white lace.
Turn the lace over and you have another of the flower fairies on the inside back cover of the book.
And on the back cover I've applied another bit of crochet with a raised center.
II love having the crochet edges peeking out on the sides and bottom of the book. And it's so soft and squishy; it's lovely to hold in the hands. I'm quite pleased with the way this turned out. There were many times I wasn't sure what I was doing. When I hit upon the fact that I'm trying to showcase the prettiest parts of the embroidered vintage hankies and find places for the short strips of lace and trims and such I realized that I'm trying to save textiles treasures. Thus the beginning of what I expect to be a new series of little books. 😊
