Knitting and a textile book

Another jumper started.

It has been a busy couple of weeks. I have been involved with the Drama group once more. Not, this time, making costumes, but helping out with fast changes. With so much sitting around to do, I had to find a second knitting project since I quickly finished off the jumper shown last time.  I chose to do the same pattern again. So far I have completed the back and knitted the front to the stage between the casting off for the armhole shaping ant the casting off I shall need to do for the neck. My husband really likes the blue jumper, but hasn't worn it yet since it really has been a little too warm for a thick jumper. I hope he doesn't do his usual thing of putting it safely in the cupboard and only bringing it out "for best". This brown version will probably be for me since I could do with another really cosy jumper.

The completed "Music" book

I was also busy during the past week with completing a textile book. This has been going on for such a very long time. The group decided that last Friday was the deadline for completing these. So I got mine finished just in time.

As you can seen from the photo above, it is a concertina book. Each page is just 6 inches wide and 8 inches high. Most of the pages have been produced using an embroidery machine. Not surprising since the group is called the Machine Embroidery Group! I don't have such a machine and so all my pages were made using a mixture of appliqué and free machine embroidery onto my own dyed and printed fabrics.

Brenda's pages

Hilda's pages

Karen's pages

Marion's pages

Judy's pages

A third page from Judy and my explanation of the project.

Judy was very sweet and made three pages for me. This really worked well when putting the book together since I was able to add an explanation about the project onto a single page.

The covers

As you will notice, my front and back pages are free machine embroidered onto a piece of my own dyed fabric. I really wasn't happy with the intensity of the dye on this piece of fabric, but it worked perfectly for this project. It has been hanging around in my collection of fabrics for over dyeing or printing for a couple of years now.

The backing used for the pages showing the hinges.

The back of the book has been covered using my own dyed fabrics. I couldn't bear the thought of cutting these bits up, so having larger pieces like this to show the accidental patterns caused by the dyes was rather a lot of fun. Each of the pages is backed onto a stiff vilene using bondaweb. The hinges are simply dressmakers tape (used for strengthening seams in flimsy fabrics) which I inherited from my late mother-in-law. Each page is zigzagged to catch the tape and bind the edges.