Busy, busy.

Well, it is the end of term for my City and Guilds course.  I can't believe the last 10 weeks have flown by so quickly.  This week we had a special workshop on book making.  Not the sort with the horses you understand, that would be weird for a design and craft course, but making lovely note books to show off all our design ideas.  More on that in a moment.

First of all I wanted to go back a week and show you my crazy patchwork from last weeks lesson.  It was slow going as it is the hand stitched version but this is how far I have got.

I decided on a blue red and gold theme, the primary colours really.  I have sewn most of the pieces onto the calico - I have used ordinary patchwork cotton fabric, a few bits of silk and some voile which I have used over the top of some fabric so that the calico doesn't show through.  It is meant to be square but I have yet to trim it.

I even have a tiny bit of gold lame that I got with a sample pack ages ago.   The voile is covering the pice of plain blue fabric at the bottom which has a bit of a shine.  It was fiddly as voile isn't keen on lying flat and you can't iron it but it looks quite good.

The bit with the red leaf on a gold background is very posh silk upholstery fabric - 2 layers thick. Whilst it is very nice it has frayed horribly so I have had to edge it with ribbon. Embroidery just won't work there.  So, having done all that I now have to tidy it up and do the embellishments with beads and some fancy stitching.  Should be fun.

And this is the book I made this week which I am quite pleased with.

It is A5 sized and is made from cardboard with hand decorated paper covering. The inside is heavy paper, torn for a more handmade look. The pages are stitched together and given some support by the ribbon so this picture shows the spine.



And these are the pages - 7 signatures or groups of pages with 8 pages in each signature.  Quite a decent size really

The hardest part was assembling it,  It was really hard to line up the board covers with the pages especially if you tried to do the front and back covers at the same time.  Mine aren't quite the same but you can't see that from these photos and I am trying to ignore it or I will never be very pleased with it.  The perfectionist in me won't let me be pleased!!  Anyway, I have enough materials to make another one so I shall see if I have learned by my mistakes and can do a better job of lining it up next time.

And finally, as I didn't have a knitting picture to upload last time, here is a picture of the back of the cardie I am in the process of knitting.

The yarn is Sirdar Escape in these lovely shade of blue. turquiose and navy.  I just fell in love with it in the shop as the colours seemed to glow.  It knits up quickly too so I am enjoying this project.  I haven't done much this week though as we had visitors this weekend but I am hoping for a quieter weekend next weekend and then perhaps I might manage some more.



And finally, whilst I was sorting out my photos I realised I seem to be having a bit of a blue and turquoise thing going on at the moment - my notebook and my cardie seem to be using the same paletter.  Maybe I will start a new trend - colour coordinating your clothes with your stationary!

Thanks for reading.  I hope that next time I have a finished piece of hand sewn crazy patchwork to show.    Best go and get on with it!!