Scrap Happy Day in October

I've got another textile book for you. This one is just a tad larger than the last few at about 4" square. I took a vintage hanky, folded it in half over a piece of batting, and randomly quilted the layers together.  

Eventually I added the vintage yo-yo and button to the front cover. 

The pages were kept within the lace trimming of the handkerchief. This book was made for my SIL. She is suffering from macular degeneration, slowly losing her vision. My goal was to make high contrast pages with a variety of textures that would give her pleasure to see while she still can and hold and stroke when her world goes entirely dark.

I cut a heart template out of a 3" square and used it for every page. This first one is a flannel heart on denim. All the hearts are raw edge applique, blanket stitched in place. 

The second heart was cut from a piece of kantha (a type of quilt made in India). The white stitches in the heart were done by the maker of the kantha. The background of that page is a dupioni silk. The next page foundation is cotton damask. The heart is another silk that came with chain stitching lines on it. 

On the left page of the center spread we have a heart cut from Guatemalen woven cotton fabric. The right hand heart was cut from vintage feed sacking. The foundation is a quilter's cotton. 

On page six we have a wool heart on the other half of the cotton damask. The floral heart opposite was cut from a precious piece of baby wale corduroy. The foundation under the corduroy is the dupioni silk again.

Page eight is denim ticking on blue jean denim. I used the corner of another vintage hanky to create a pocket to hold a piece of paper with descriptions of what I've done someone can read to my SIL.

That just leaves us with the inside back cover. 

We share something we've made out of scraps or repurposed materials on the 15th of each month. Scrap Happy Day is currently being hosted by Kjerstin. Having a deadline has helped me more than once to get a project made or finished. If you'd like to participate too just leave a comment on Kjerstin's blog. 😊

Kjerstin, Eva, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan,
Moira, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Sue L, Vera, Kate,
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Alissa, Tierney,
Hannah, Maggie and Wizzy  

Textile Treasures Book I

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. 

On the inside front cover I have raw edge "pieced" around a feedsack patch with other prints of a similar type. The yellow strips were once part of an apron. The selvedge edge is attached along the left edge but loose on the right hand side. 

I hemmed the bottom strip to turn it into a one inch by 2 inch pocket. I have a card in there with my name and the date for future reference. 

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. 

I

I 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. 😊

Scrap Happy in June

 This Scrap Happy Day I am sharing my start for my Textile Tales book for June. These little books are great for putting small scraps to use. This time I'm using Janet Kime's book Quilts to Share as my inspiration. 

 

This is an older book, published in 1991 by That Patchwork Place. It's one of many in my library I've had to have taken apart and individual pages put in archival sleeves to protect myself from the particulates/fumes that emanate from the ink or paper. It's the source for the cat block I've used for quilts in the past. 

 Most recently I've had this quilt from the book on my mind:

 What if I made the cover for my book like that?

 I didn't get as much variety in strip widths but I was also working at a much smaller scale. This cover piece measures 8.25" x 4.5." I worked strictly out of my bag of scraps that are less than 1.5" wide. 

I used the sew and flip method to secure the strips to batting and the piece of fabric for the inside of the cover. 

 This is a Mary Lou Weidman print. A major part of the book is dedicated to sharing how to organize the making of scrappy community quilts (quilts to be donated to a charity) within a quilt guild or group. So I felt the print of "quilt ladies" would be most appropriate to include. 😊

I have also constructed one half of one signature for my book. Out of scraps of course.

 This 7" x 4.5" unit will eventually make up two pages in my book. I have an idea for the center spread based on the little house quilt blocks in Janet's book. After that I don't know what will come next. The cat block will not work at this small scale or the square format of my pages. The Textile Tales books are not meant to be exact replicas of the inspiration volumes by any means. Just a jumping off place. 

I try to keep a stack of scrap patches near the sewing machine to sew together inbetween the seams of other projects. These are the blocks I've built over the last month or so:

 One of these days I really need to do something about the drawer FULL of 6" Hole in the Barn Door blocks (also known as Churn Dash blocks). It's getting so I can't easily put any more blocks in that drawer. 

Scrap Happy Day is hosted by Kate of Tall Tales from Chiconia on the 15th of each month. We have a new participant joining us this month. Welcome Wizzy!  

Kate, Eva, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa, Tierney,
Hannah, Maggie and Wizzy 

 

Textile Tales #5

I'm a little slow to share my May textile book with you. Better late than never I hope. 😊 

I didn't have a specific book to use as inspiration this time around. I might have had if I hadn't thinned out my library before now. Suffice to say I used my collection of African prints for this one. I'm calling it African Tails and Textiles.  

 

On the front cover I simply did a bit of outline stitching around the warrior and the shield.  Then I couched a chenille yarn around that patch. 

 

The inside of the cover is a single piece of fabric. It's pretty tightly woven, making it less fun to stitch through, so I just put some tiny upright crosses in the sky area. A lot of the stitching in this book is very simple.

 

The black lines on the print behind the cheetah were stem stitched with black floss. I used a green perle cotton to overstitch the green markings in the print in the lower right corner of the right hand page. 

 This is the center spread. The background is a single print. I didn't bother with any stitching other than what was necessary to applique the animals in place. 

 

Again, I only outlined stitched the face in the center of the upper half of the left page then put some straight stitches in the orange background behind the rhinoceros. African trade beads were strung to dangle from the button in the top corner of that page. On the left are a few more beads and another button (lower right corner). 

 

The final page has four more buttons and a few Colonial knots. There are some straight stitches in the yellow area at the bottom of that page. Opposite that is the rest of the blue print from the inside front cover. Then a string of African trade beads separates the blue from the next patch. The light batik print is folded over the edge from the back cover.  

 

The back cover probably has the most stitching of any page in this book. It was no easy feat to stitch with a black thread on that black background around the figures in the central patch. At least, not for my aging eyes! It's basically echo quilting. There is a layer of thin batting between the cover pieces. 

 

Here's the outside of the book open flat. I had more trouble stitching up the spine of this book than I've had with previous volumes. Not sure why. There are some tightly woven fabrics, and it's possible I ran into knots or stitches in some of the pages. I'm happy to have it done finally and am pleased with the result. Now it's on to my Textile Tales book for June! 

In case you weren't aware, I've been making one book per month since January of this year, following along with the Roxy sisters on YouTube. Their project ends with book six. I may very well carry on for the rest of the year as I'm finding this a great way to use up little pieces of favorite prints and treasures that I can stitch in place.

 

Scrap Happy in April

 I've got another little book to share with you. This may have been my very first attempt at a fabric book, inspired by Susan Taylor Brown's "just because" books. Other books have been started and finished since I embarked on this one.   

 This book is about 3.25" wide and 5" tall. I only used things I found in my stash. The challenge was to see what I could do in a black and white palette. The 'Liberty' tag was cut from a silk tie. The buttons are vintage. I had fun playing with my buttons in this book. 

 I tried to use a variety of fabric types. The eyelet on page 2 is a little pocket. The black flower next to it is a crochet piece as is the white flower on the next page. 

 More labels from neckties on page four. The number 2 and the spiffy fella on page 5 were cut from quilting cottons. I used this book as an opportunity to feature some laces along with everything else.  

 After I'd added the mouse (from another quilter's cotton), the strip of crochet and the fibers I couldn't bring myself to do any additional stitching on this center spread. I really like being able to read the words that were printed on the cotton along with the images of cookie dough on the cookie sheets. 

 More labels. Then I fell into spooky mode. 

 On the upper left of the back cover is a waterfall of scrap patches. 

 I used this book as a learning experience. That's one reason it has taken so long to get it to a finished state. I'd get stuck, not knowing what to do next. Then I'd come across someone else's approach or technique and give it a try. I've learned what I enjoy doing and what doesn't appeal to me so much. 

Here are the links for other bloggers who generally participate in this blog hop.  😊

Kate, Eva, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa,
Hannah and Maggie  

 

Textile Tales Book 3

 I used Rachel Ashwell's book My Floral Affair as inspiration for my third effort in Roxy's Journal of Stitchery Volume 9. I also used it as a place to feature some of the embroidered corners of the vintage hankies I've been collecting. 😊 But it was a hand towel that became the outer cover for the book.

 I decorated it with short bits of lace. 

The stitching on the back cover started as a way to make the back long enough when I accidentally cut it too short. I added on another piece of the towel with herringbone stitch then added a row of blanket stitches and another row of herringbone to balance it out. Oh, and I added a couple more of the lazy daisy flowers and leaves to fill up he back cover. 

I used a quilting cotton for the inside of the covers. There's a layer of thin cotton batting between the two layers. 

 All the flowers (and the leaves on the inside front cover) have been fussy cut from vintage hankies and raw edge appliqued in place. On the first page I used the corner of the hankie to save the scalloped hem and seed stitched the background area with tiny upright cross stitches. They've become my favorite way to give a background texture.  

 On the left hand page of this spread I used a green cotton print under the hankie pieces to give more a feel of a garden. I used detached chain stitches (lazy daisy stitches) to fill the background and give a further impression of leaves. The yellow on the next page was from a linen handkerchief. I added to the foliage on the upper half with some fern stitches.

Here I've used another corner over a burgundy cotton. I outlined the flowers and big white-on-white leaves, securing the hankie to the cotton with those stitches. 

 This is a linen and Battenburg lace doily that was hand dyed (but not by me). This is the center spread in my book.

 This page on the right was the last one I worked on. I was able to purchase the lacy pocket and the little pots of daisies from the same lady the pink doily came from. I used this pocket to hold a tag with the documentation I'm trying to include with each book.

 Next we have more of the yellow linen with another corner laid over top. I've simply stitched around the flowers again. On the right I appliqued pieces from two different hankies, once more preserving a shaped corner.

 The final page features a rose and rosebuds, again from two different hankies. 

 When I made the cover I added a square of a plaid I particularly like, intending to use it for documentation. I'd forgotten about that when I found the lacy pocket and was anxious to complete the book pages. 😉 I didn't add the crocheted flower until the very end. 

 And that closes the book for March!