My friend, Marilyn, taught our fiber art group how to make fabric books. Hers were lovely, with pale pages, lots of embellishments, and amazing contents.
I had just whacked off a good bit of an already quilted quilt and thought that piece would make a good start for the cover. This is what it looked like when freshly trimmed. (From the bottom of this quilt.)
And here it is as the book cover, front (right) and back (left.)
I added hand embroidery to both covers.
I initially planned to leave the edges unfinished, but later added hand buttonhole stitching, which I really like.
Knowing that I would probably add colorful items to my book, I chose black for the pages.
The pages are about 6″ square with one layer of batting between two pieces of fabric. The batting gives it some body. But, maybe the coolest thing about the structure of the book is that it’s made with signatures. These are groups of pages that are sewn as one into the spine of a book. In this case there are 3 signatures, creating 6 pages. The signatures are attached with a space between them, (1/2″ here,) which creates a flat spine. A very nice shape.
For my content I plan to add little samples and things I’ve done over the years, as well as ones I’ll do in the future.
This first page shows a sample I did of cording made on the machine.
Isn’t the knot cool?
The only other page I’ve done is one I did after the book was constructed. The batting layer makes it easy to slip a needle around without having stitches and knots showing on the back. A nice feature.
This little book was quick to make and I look forward to adding little things to it.
Other bookish things I’ve tried:
Mixed media book
A book using tea bags
A video about how to make an accordion book
Ellen Lindner