Two big projects I was working on in the run up to Christmas were a couple of felted and embroidered journal covers, made to cover Moleskine large note/sketchbooks. The colour themes were 'Sea' and 'Autumn'. These were by far the biggest felting projects I have undertaken using my embellisher machine, and it certainly felt the strain of felting mixed fibres over about a 30cm x 20cm area - lots of broken needles!
For 'Sea', I used organza ribbon and fabric, wool locks, merino roving, silk fibre, silk noil, silk throwsters waste, angelina fibre, silk/metal organza fabric, net fabric, silk fabric and bamboo fibre. I felted this onto cotton batting, and then masked off the journal cover area and added lots of hand embroidery stitches: feather, colonial knot, bullion, seed, whipped spider, cast-on, double cast-on and fly stitches.
I also added a beautiful big carved mother-of-pearl button (it had been lying in wait in my stash for years, waiting for the perfect project!).
To make the lining of the cover, I used pieces of antique Japanese kimono fabric samples - I bought many of these at the most amazing temple book market in Kyoto on our last trip in 2007:
I also made two different kumihimo braids, one for a page-marker and one for closure. Here's what the inside looks like, with the cover on the journal:
And here's the final journal cover, inside and outside:
...and a closeup of the button, and a texture closeup:
Phew! That's a lot of photos... ! I think I'll show 'Autumn' in a separate post :D
5 comments:
Beautiful cover, can't wait to see 'Autumn'! Happy Christmas and New Year.
What a beautiful cover! Can´t wait to see autumn.
It's lovely, but I wouldn't have expected anything else! As for broken needles, maybe you need my DVD, LOL. ;0)
Really gorgeous! I have a journal that has been waiting for the right cover....maybe I will get the urge during holidays, but I seem to be quite relaxed these days!
Thank you, everyone, and a very Happy New Year to you all!
Kate x
(p.s. nice plug, M :P !!)
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