Fabric book covers, knitting and finding inspiration.

Well the shawl is nearing completion. I have added a picot bind off to the edge since I didn't fancy either the garter stitch edging or the ruffles of the original pattern. It will be interesting to see this after blocking. Not many more stitches to go.

I've been playing about with making some simple paper notebooks lately. The book cover saying "East of India" was a paper bag I really just couldn't throw away or recycle.

This is the latest fabric book cover. This time I have covered a plastic A4 file. It has been made using African fabrics as befits the title of the file - "Africa". It now houses my small collection of printed African fabric and two pieces which have been languishing deep within my collection of UFOs. I bought the fabric here.

Both are based on this beautiful carved wood head which my daughter brought back from Tanzania. I managed to get a few photos of it before it went home with her. The photo has been altered using Photoshop to minimise the number of colours.

I really should do something with those pieces, but I don't quite know what yet.

I've been searching for inspiration lately for the latest challenge from the "Sky's the Limit" group. The latest challenge is entitled "Inspired by................" So I rooted around the library and found these wonderful books on Architecture. Whether I shall use them for the final piece or not remains to be seen. I am enjoying looking through the pages of these books for now.

I loved the photos of fences and bannisters in this book. Beautiful work and so ornate.

This one contains some wonderful buildings.

Where do you find your own inspiration?

Quilts, knitting and more.

Have you ever used this stuff?

I found it some time ago - probably a couple of years ago on a stall at a show somewhere. I rediscovered it tucked away in the back of a drawer when I came to reorganise my workroom a few weeks back.

All you have to do is stitch it to the back of some fabric,

Use the steam of an iron held just above the "Texture Magic" and this happens...........

The "Texture Magic" scrumples up and you have instant texture. Great fun to play with. The piece above is destined to become part of a Journal Quilt for this year's challenge. More photos when the first four are completed. The challenge this year is based on colour. The first four are to be Shades of Red. It just makes sense in my head to get all four red quilts done together. Yes, I know that is just insane...........

One little challenge I was given lately by my friend Hilary was to make book covers. This is my first cover. It uses some printed fabric I made ages ago. The notebook inside is home-made. Just a few sheets of textured paper held together by ribbon at the moment. I shall be replacing the ribbon with wire shortly so that I can actually use the notebook. The ribbon holds the pages together too tightly for them to be opened easily.

I promised knitting. This first piece has been ongoing for a little while. A fairisle waistcoat in Rowan Cashsoft 4ply. The design is by the wonderful Martin Storey. I do like his designs. This one is "Rosamund" and can be found in the "Rowan Classic 4ply designs for men and women".

This was finished recently too, a lace weight top. No, I don't have a waist like this - Aggie my tailor's dummy likes to think I have. The design is "Tirrold" by by Jen Arnall-Culliford and can be found in "The Scrumptious Collection" Volume 1 published by Fyberspates. The yarn used is Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace weight, a glorious mixture of silk and merino.

I have been making a number of shawls. This is the second of this design, the gorgeous "Holden Shawlette", by Mindy Wilkes. I wear this one a lot around my neck and shoulders. So useful in the chilly weather. I have yet another shawlette on my needles at the moment, a design by Kristin Briney. This is the "Context Scarf", a delightful shawl which is being knitted in sock yarn.

"Blue Eyes" has been languishing in my collection of WIPs for some time. I completed the top recently by adding a few borders. It is now a modest 36 inches square.

The next photo shows the back. As you can see it uses a spare block I had made for the top but didn't use.

At present the quilt has been layered and quilting has started and faltered........... I must admit to getting bored. I had tried to quilt this very simply and I am not entirely happy with it. It sits on top of Aggie taunting me to get back to finishing it off................. It will have to wait until I have finished with my Journal Quilts. I have four on the go at once at the moment.

I'm back!

Hello everyone. Sorry there has been a distinct lack of blog posts over the past month. I have been busy with the sewing for my daughters wedding on Saturday 13th August: my daughter's wedding dress, the flower girl's dress and my own dress and jacket.

I promise photos will follow. I just need permissions to share the wedding dress and flower girl's dresses with you. Then I need a kind person to supply me with photos of myself weearing the suit I made as well as the matching hat which I trimmed........... I was too busy at the time to take any photos...............

Now, having had a week to completely relax and catch up with some reading, I am raring to go. Yes, plans are beginning to gel for some of the projects I have on hand - the next few journal quilts, a challenge quilt, and a book making session I shall be leading. There are one or two other things that I have forgotten about for now, but then I can tell you all about these later.

Staying busy and sewing madly.

Hello there. Sorry, it is rather a while since I last posted anything here. I've been sewing madly, making clothes and working on two journal quilts at the same time.

Since the last post, I have completed the pair of trousers (Kwik Sew 3363) I had made such a mess of making, and finished a second blouse from the same Hot Patterns design shown in my last post.

The trousers turned out quite well, although the waistband is still a little looser than I would like. However, they are really nice to wear and I shall use the pattern again.

The dress (Simplicity 2174), was made quickly for a friend's 60th birthday party. He had asked for a Scottish theme and everyone had to wear something tartan. Luckily I had this tartan in my stash. It was a lucky find a couple of years ago in a local charity shop.

The party was huge fun with an English Ceilidh - and yes, I danced most of the dances. The food was superb and so were the fireworks. It was such fun to meet some old friends there whom we hadn't seen in years.

The wedding dress has been started. This is for my elder daughter and will be ready for her wedding next month. So far, I have made the toile for the fitted bodice, but got no further since I need to catch up with Liz and check that it fits. There will be no photos of the dress until after the wedding, which I hope you will understand.

Two Journal Quilts are currently under way, but photos of these will have to wait until they have been completed and photos posted on the Contemporary Quilt Yahoo site.

Apart from all this, I have started Gretchen Hirsch's "Sew Retro - perfect bombshell dresses" course with Craftsy.com. This may appear total madness, but Gertie goes through a lot of techniques which will be helpful to me in making the wedding dress.

Sewing and keeping busy.

Well, I have been keeping very busy doing some sewing. Not my usual kind. I shall need to get back to the quilting and textile "art" before too long since I need to have some creativity in my life too.



This past week or so I've been trying to hone my dressmaking skills, ready for making my daughter's wedding dress. The first piece was this crepe de chine blouse. It is such a lovely design and fits well, and is already one of my favourites. The pattern is V7903, a Today's Fit pattern by Sandra Betzina for Vogue. (Yes, each link is different. I do hope that you find them useful.)



This was the second item - a shirt. Again, such a comfortable design to wear. Sadly, since it is made from quilting weight cotton, it is really a little too warm to wear at this time of year. That said, I did wear it last week during a particularly chilly couple of days. It was nice to feel warm! However, one child did bring me right back to earth with a bump, when she innocently said "my grandma has curtains like that". I really couldn't help laughing, since the fabric is similar to the old toile de jouy design, so yes, could easily be seen on curtains and the like. It reminded me of the time when I bought some gorgeous red floral fabric to make dresses for my daughters when they were small. Now that time I did buy curtain fabric - and those dresses were loved and worn such a lot.......... My girls were only five and three at the time. Happy memories.
Oh yes, the pattern for this shirt is this one: Classix Nouveau Great White Shirt from Hotpatterns. Again, a really well designed pattern which fits beautifully. I was really impressed to find the pattern printed on really sturdy paper. The instructions were good too.

My third project is currently being rescued from complete disaster. A pair of trousers, and no, I didn't make a muslin.......... yes, bad mistake. I made them too big and so have had to take them almost entirely back to the original pieces again. It was all pinned and ready to be reassembled earlier this evening, when I managed to break the zip. Well, to be accurate, I accidentally took the metal zipper piece off the cut end of the zip itself and wasn't able to replace it........... More disassembly later, I am about to replace the broken zip with another one from my stash.......... Thank goodness for having a stash of zips..................... I decided enough mistakes had been made, so stopped for a cup of tea, and a Blog post. Why, you may ask was the end of the zip cut in the first place? It was part of the instructions for making the fly front. It has to be cut when the waistband is added. Why did I get so far before I realised I had made such a stupid mistake? I don't know. I should have stopped many times to check the sizing, but didn't. Lesson now learnt.

The pattern is this one: 3363 from Kwik Sew. Please don't let my misadventures put you off this pattern. It is a really nice design with good instructions. I was just enjoying myself too much to stop and think and try them on.

It's just as well that I can laugh at myself. I've been chuckling at how silly I have been whilst writing this. Still, better to get everything wrong doing a project like this than to get my daughter's wedding dress in a mess................ Back to the sewing machine to retrieve these trousers. I really need to add them to my wardrobe.

Hopefully, I will be able to show a completed pair of trousers which are wearable before too much longer.

The Sea book

I have now completed my book. Please see the finished book here:

http://thestoryofthetravelingpages.blogspot.com/2011/06/sea-book-is-complete.html

Book construction and bead soup.

The book is a series of parts at the moment. This is part of the collection of pages I got through the Traveling Pages Textile Book Page swap. You can see more about the whole project here.

I love the texture of the different pages and the way their edges have been finished.



Here is the bead soup. Not sure how I shall use these beads yet.



The last collection of materials are these ribbons. I'm not entirely sure how to use these yet. I do have an idea of weaving these around the uprights I am using as the "spine" of my book. However, it remains to be seen whether this will work or not.



I am adding these uprights to each of the pages. They will form the "spine" of my book.



You can see a little more here. This is the front page. The back page looks exactly the same - well, as nearly as I could make it. If you would like to read more about how the page was constructed, please read more here.

There are just two more pages to go and then I can sort out the spine and get weaving - literally.