STITCHPIC SKETCHBOOKS

 

Hello everyone, thank you for popping in to see what's going on in my blogland, no doubt you're all busy with Christmas preparations so I thought a couple of escapist images might cheer you up!

I have been busy hand stitching little pictures and I came up with the idea of putting them on sketchbooks as gifts for family and friends.

 

These first two are for a charming French couple who we met through Luba and Hervé.  Michel gave me a huge stash of knitting yarns recently when he was clearing out his ex wife's house after she died and I have used some of them in this picture of the sea at Perros, attached to a piece of Luba's linen.

 

This was my first stitched cover, sketchbook no 43, inspired by a photo taken by an English friend Rose Jones.

 

 

 

My lichen got attached to a sketchbook for my niece Esther's birthday.

 

Luba got the lily I stitched using more of the samples she gave me in the spring.

 

I spent a few weeks in the autumn embroidering Dala horses for my family Christmas cards but one got left behind so I added some Japanese style boro stitching to bring the thin layers of the fabric background together and attach it to the velour spine and back of the cover.

 

As you can see I've already put the year and book number on the spine, something I usually do in gold outliner pen when the book is completed.  This one is coming on holiday with me in January when we go to the Canaries for some winter sunshine.

 

 

And finally a very special project I made for my granddaughter's 17th birthday in November.

She has left school and begun to study art at college and I wanted to give her a memorable sketchbook to use.  Thinking about her love of trees and her interest in graffiti I collaged her name in scraps of nature inspired fabrics onto a piece of black linen then stitched all over in pale green. 

The book is A4 in size, the biggest I've ever made and quite hard to handle when stitching the signatures together. Unfortunately I forgot to photograph the finished article so you'll just have to imagine the cover with her name wrapped around from front to back.  I'm looking forward to my next visit to see what she has drawn in it.