More Journals

Our fourth lesson showed us how to make faux leather using a paper bag. I followed the instructions and painted mine brown but as I rarely make anything in brown I was unsure whether I would use a brown journal, even a 'leather' one, so I had another go and used blue paint - much more me. Inside I used wrapping paper to separate the sets of paper.

Back to fabric for the last lesson. I decided I wanted to create a design rather than using one piece of fabric. My design has wavy lines and I looked through my stash of fabrics and found one in a beigey colour and one with tight swirls in grey. I wouldn't have thought of putting these colours together but I was surprised that they work together and like the contrast of the open and tight swirls. The black stitching is freehand machine embroidery.

I have enjoyed this course and would recommend it to others. Sue Bleiweiss is running it again in June.

Journal Making

I've just finished an online journal making course with Sue Bleiweiss . It has been an enjoyable course and as well as learning how to make different styles of journals you can join the online forum and interact with other students. We've posted photos of our journals for each other to see and you can see them on Flickr. I joined this course to give myself another way of using my embroideries and other textile pieces.

Here's the journal from lesson 1. The pages are sewn in and there are pockets to hold tags.

The second journal, a sketchbook, I made is my favourite as I made it for a special purpose. I want to make some textile art with the theme of Venice and so have created a Venice sketchbook. This time instead of using a piece of fabric from my stash I created my own by printing photos of Venice onto some calico and then added small pieces of scrim and organzas, stitching them on with the sewing machine followed by some hand stitching and then adding buttons.

The inside cover has pockets and I have created pages with pockets to hold my photos. Ring binders are used in this journal to hold the pages, I've also included plain pages for my design work.

After spending a lot of time making the second journal I wanted a quick hit for the third one, but instead of using fabric I already had I made some using three designs of napkins! In this one the pages are held together with a ribbon.

I'll share my other journals with you another day.