Fabricating Books!

 A crafty friend came to visit me this weekend and as the weather looked poor we planned a day of playing with glue and fabric.

She was been making fabric books now for ages so it was time to give me a lesson.

 

I already have a fair collection of fabrics and "bits" so it was time to use up all these things I have collected that might be useful one day....



 

 The plan was to make a fabric photo album.

The chosen photos were printed on to printable cotton

This is funny stuff. It is cotton fabric with a backing and it just peels off to give a thin cotton fabric with the picture which can be glued or stitched on to other things. I found it helpful to have some paper pictures too which allows for some experiments in cropping and shaping the images. The special "paper" is expensive and you need to get it right first time.

 The base pages were cut out of a reasonably heavy calico and then the pages assembled. Scrapbookers have an advantage here. This was my first attempt at it and I was using up what I had. The yellow background fabric was left over from some cushion making many years ago and the patterned square was from a job lot of batik patterned cloth I picked up from a quilting shop a few years ago just because I liked it. I knew I'd find a use for it someday!

The next stage was to stitch the fabric and the picture into place. This was a chance to use some of the fancy stitches on my sewing maching but a straight stitch works as well. This page was just stitched around the small yellow square and the picture.

Once this was done it was time to add some embellishments.  The orange flowers were from a scrap of old lace and just cut out. The tag was cut from a piece of  card and hand lettered and attached with a small piece of ribbon. The sunflower came from a paper craft kit.

I wanted to finish the project in one day so it is fairly plain. It would look nice to have stamped the yellow base fabric first before stitching down the  patterned fabric and the picture but there is always next time.

Once a couple of pages were done they were simply placed back to back, seamed together and neatened with pinking shears.

I made six pages in total and a slightly larger cover ( again base calico covered in fabric)   to complete the album.

The pages and cover were pierced with eyelets and the whole thing held together with ribbon.  The cover isn't quite done and I'll be adding more to  it once I decide what!



This is definitely something I'll be doing again. Perhaps taking some images from the Orkney trip and using some of the shells and other things we brought back.