Another book...

Life has been kind of late - despite much work-work and shed painting and gardening, I have managed time in the studio and it has been productive time.  I've had to tidy up the studio once or twice to make room for the next thing I had to get going on, but it has been a joy to make and create and to follow the muse.

I am still preparing the other beautiful pages for stitching into a book; they are ready to go now, the covers are made and I just need to be still and quiet and stitch.  You may recall the focus of that one had been the cut-outs (but other things also happened) and I wanted to create a companion book in a way, that used the cutouts. I suddenly saw cut-outs within cut-outs and drifting lines of stitching.

Despite seeing it in my mind's eye, I needed to do a mock-up to test if the idea would hold and how I would do the details. Because I am not always that practical and don't always immediately grasp the engineering requirements of my ideas, mock-ups are very good for me!

Here is what I looked at, and it gave me enough confidence to begin.

So off I went. I used a Hahnemulle bamboo paper - it is soft to feel, but has great rigidity as well and would hold the folds crisply and be able to stand. You can see I rehearsed stitching the cutouts into the diagonal corners, at the top and bottom, centred; and side to side also centred. The last one showed me that side to side ones would fall over like a spinning wheel! I realised the diagonals would be too hard to place accurately so it was all top and bottom from here on in.

I patiently cut out the bigger cutouts, sequenced my map page cutouts, pricked the holes and stitched all the cut outs in place.  Then for the thread. I liked the soft, light as a feather silk ribbon and some embroidery cotton to match. But when I got around to doing it I just couldn't use the blood red. It was back to white on white neutrals for me!  I also reduced the embroidery thread to one thread rather than two, making it more ethereal.

I (we) decided the lower stitching was too low; and needed to be slightly higher up to balance the page. I also decided that the stitches were too long and somewhat clumsy so went for tinier, closer together ones. I also felt the movement down below needed to be smoother rather than jerky; and that the punched stitching holes were too big; so I used an awl to punch multiple tiny holes instead. I used two threads of embroidery cotton and also made occasional knot 'tuffs'.

I then joined the two parts, folded the accordion and attached it to the covers I had made earlier. I don't usually make the covers first!  They are using handmade paper (by Barry) and a bit of other paper from my cupboard; the ties are the same soft silk ribbon, and then it went under weights overnight.

And here is where we got to...