Sewing In Progress and a Hungry Hawk

    Hi everyone. Another Friday is already here. I hope everyone has had a nice week so far.

    Today I'm joining Nicole at Friday Face Off, Gillena at Friday Lunch Break and also Halle at Art Journal Journey. Today I have some art in progress  to share.

    I've been working on another cloth journal. My base pages are done, but I haven't put them together or added them to a rigid backing (like interfacing). After that I will stitch 2 pages together back to back to make a two sided page in this journal.

  My background is just an old yellowed bed pillow cover that I cut up. Then I die cut some circles from fabric scraps, and  I appliqued them onto the background.  The photo booth faces and  the slide are paper images that I  printed onto some white cloth. You can create your own cloth to run it through the printer (*instructions below) or you can use pre-treated cotton cloth sheets that you can buy. I happened to have an old packet of ready to print cloth sheets that had a few sheets left so that's what I did, but making your own sheets isn't all that difficult either.

  After that I took 2 little crochet-like flowers and 2 red buttons and hand stitched them down. I snipped these flowers off of something old a long time ago and I can't remember what they were on. I also took a small applique (again snipped off something old that I can't remember) and stitched it down. What I do to finish this page is something I don't quite know yet.

  My other face for today is this Cooper's Hawk. The other day I was driving into my driveway,  just a few feet from parking, when this guy swooped down in front of my car.  He/she then flew over and landed on my husband's workshop.

  I think he/she was interested in raiding the phoebe's nest which sits up under the eaves, but he couldn't get in there. I was down below in the driveway next to my car, and all I had on me was my phone. I zoomed the camera to max, and that means I can't really crop down these photos because they won't come out very clear.

   While I was watching him the whole forest was filled with songbirds in warning call mode. And then, it went very quiet.

  After that he/she flew off into the woods. I'm sure he was looking for another nest to raid.

  That's all for me in this post. Have a great Friday and start to your weekend.   

*Step-by-Step Guide for making cloth sheets for your printer

1. Cut the Materials: Cut a piece of freezer paper and a piece of fabric so they are exactly the same size as standard printer paper (8.5 × 11 inches). 
2. Iron Together: Place the freezer paper shiny side (the waxy side) down against the back of your fabric. Use a hot, dry iron to press the two layers together until they are firmly bonded.
3. Trim Edges: Snip away any stray threads or frayed fabric edges so the sheet will feed smoothly without catching on the printer’s rollers. 
4. Feed into Printer: Place the fabric-and-paper sheet into your printer's paper tray. Note: Ensure your printer is set to print on the fabric side, not the paper side. On most top-feed printers, this means facing the fabric side down.
5. Print: On your computer, set your print settings to "Best Photo" or "High Quality". This prevents inconsistent ink flow on the fabric. 

Sunday in the Art Room-From the Archives

   Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope your weekend is going well.

   Today I am joining Gillena for her Sunday Smiles and also Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room, also known as SITAR.

  Last Sunday I showed you a few travel journal covers. Besides travel journals, I make other books that tell stories.  I  love making books and telling stories.❤ I'll try not to bore you with too many journals I've made, but I've gotten inspired to pull out some old ones.

  Lately I've been working with the more usual paper journals. However, I do occasionally get the urge to sew and make cloth books. I like the challenge of making cloth books because they aren't quite so straight forward as a standard paper book. 

   For one thing most cloth isn't very rigid so you either have to fix the cloth to be more rigid or you need to attach 2 pieces of cloth to make a front side  a back side. If you are going to attached 2 pieces of fabric together to make a front and back, you have to remember that if you sew on  one side, those stitches will show up on the back side unless you connect the front and back pieces after you have finished each side. Plus you need to decide how rigid you want your pages, and if you want some rigidity, you need to decide what to add between the front and back fabric pieces  (like interfacing, cardboard, wood) to create that rigidity. 

   And then you need to decide how you want to bind your pages together. That's a whole other thought process but I won't bore you with that today.

  Last week I dug out a couple of my cloth journals. I decided to focus this post on one of them. I wish I could actually remember when I made this journal, but I know it's been at least (if not longer) 15 years. It's one of my early books. I can tell by how some of the pages are decorated. My style has changed and (hopefully) improved; I was still in the load the page with things stage when I made this. 

  I still like most of this book. So here you go. Here's some pages from my magical moon circus book.

I'm not super crazy about the front cover, but I still really like the ruffles I sewed and added along the binding.

This (above) page is my favorite. I don't know if it was my favorite back when I made the book. The moon face was stamped and then painted.

     I made little triangular pockets and put some paper ephemera into them.

    It bugs me that the kitty's backside is hanging off the moon. But I love the moon. And I like the kitty too. The bottom of the moon is blue cloth and the top is a piece of acetate. In between I stuffed some fun angel hair fibers. I could have fixed it by making the moon wider. But I shouldn't second guess myself. Journals are ways to capture where you are at a particular time, and I'm impressed with myself that I used  so many  kinds of media.  And use them well together for the most part too. 

    There's probably too many little metal discs on this above page, but when I made the dancing lady I wanted the page to jingle like a belly dancer does when she dances. This page does jingle. So maybe the discs are OK.

 I really like this stencil/painted back cover.

     Here's a couple more pages. The last 2 photos show the veil and then the veil lifted. Which,if you read quote, is why I created a veil.

   I hope you enjoyed the views. Have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week. 

Cleaning Discoveries

 Hi everyone.  Hope your week is going well.

Last week I started a couple of indoor cleaning projects.  For one I decided it was time to do at least a partial  book purge and make some room on my bookshelves. It didn't matter if I completely finished or not, because purging books is something that never ends (mainly because I love books). For the second project, I went through some old photos.   I started both because I couldn't find something I was looking for, a book I wanted (and knew I had) and the photos  I wanted for an art project.

I must admit I have several very unorganized plastic bins of photos and old art projects stacked in the attic.  I did eventually find the photos I wanted, and I cleaned the book shelves enough to find the book I wanted. But while I was looking for the photos, I came across a bin with some journals that I had forgotten I had made. It was an exciting find, and I spent quite a bit of time going through them all.  I thought today and on occasion in the future I would share a few with you.

The first journal  I'm sharing is a cloth one I made in 2005 after coming home from a week long trip to Italy. I guess you could say it my memory book of the trip.

My pages are made from thick interfacing covered on both sides with  pieces of cloth.  The book measures 3x5  inches (7.6 x 12.7 cm)  in size.

To bind it I used some red and white fabric trim which I cut into pieces and sewed onto my pages.

And all my pages include bits and pieces from the trip or things from my stash that reminded me of some memory from the trip.

When you fully open the book, it opens into a long 8 page banner like book. The back side is plain.

Of course now that I have some room on my bookshelves, I am going to try to put these journals on my shelves (so much for the room) so I won't forget I have them in the future. Plus they've given me some inspiration and make me want to sew some new journals. 

Thanks for visiting.