Sewing books

 I made this  little chap a few weeks ago as a present for my friend Joan. She hits a milestone birthday tomorrow and she is always someone who loves a personally made gift but I've got used to him sitting on my shelf and can't bear to part with him now so I needed a plan B. Earlier this week I travelled home to visit family and spend a lovely morning with friend and fellow blogger Cathy who had promised to explain how to layer images in Photoshop to me. Well, I knew she was taking on a mammoth task but she managed to get the basic process fixed in my head and I have been practising ever since - with varied results it has to be said, but I'm getting there Cathy... honest....

 Anyway, I had made Cathy a little book as a way of saying thank you for her time and the wonderful lunch she gave me and I liked it so much myself (words I rarely say!) that I decided to make a similar one for Joan's birthday. The only thing I'd bought for Cathy's was some tape from a local shop that looked like a tape measure, otherwise everything has come from my scraps bag and old stuff I've been collecting for that day when inspiration might strike and I'd know exactly what to do with it. If it didn't lie within arms reach of my desk I have not used it! I repeated a lot of the elements for Joan's book using pages folded from torn watercolour paper and stitched together later on the sewing machine. It's a bit wonky but I shall be convincing Joan that it is 'organic' and 'unique'. It is made from collections of old sewing stuff mounted and put into little tracing paper pockets. There was no plan as such. I just did what I felt like doing and luckily had enough tape and ribbon left to adorn the covers and enable it to be tied close.

I still cannot stop making books at the moment it seems and I have been asked to run a small workshop in St Davids next month working with a group of printmakers, using their prints to make their own books. I am really looking forward to that and it has come about because of Sheila and Deborah, two lovely girls I met on my last course module. The book give away was great fun too and I may do that again in the near future. In the meantime I need to go off and wrap this book up for Joan. Then I'm going back to practising those layers using some great photos of rusty stuff that I took the other day whilst out on a jaunt to the beach. I hope the memory holds out. Wish me luck.....