The April 17, 2024 POM meeting will be about Fabric Books.
There are many kinds of books fabric and textile users make:
books for children and grandchildren
Reesa made this book for her granddaughter:
books to provide visual reminders of stitches and/or techniques
Barbara sent me these photos of books she has made. [ Unfortunately, I was unable to upload her pictures here. I forwarded her emails and attachments to Shirley who was able to make a powerpoint presentation from Barbara's images.]
books to catalogue previous projects, with leftover fabric, practice pieces, or extra finished pieces not used in the finished project
Honey is making a quilt with blocks leftover from previous quilts she has made. Instead of a quilt, a fabric book could be made.
memory books of trips taken or family events or holiday gatherings
https://thequiltshow.com/quiltipedia/who-is-cheryl-lynch (see folding books)
or
just books from stuff you liked.
I will be sharing with you three books I have made. Full disclosure - none of the ideas for book types is original. None of them have superior workmanship. Most of the ideas came from the internet, especially Cheryl Lynch who has a series of youtube videos showing how she makes her fabric books.
Back to me...
The first book I made was for a shadow box challenge of our guild - People of The Book.
The size was determined by the shadow box provided - 6 1/2" square and 2" deep.
I decided to do an accordian style book, using blue fabrics and embellishments in my stash. I took five 6 1/2" squares of fabrics leftover from previous crazy quilting projects and attached each square to a similar sized square of quilting batting.
I made it personal by having each square connected by "degrees of separation" from the next.
I searched for a "biblical" theme and chose "tzena u're-ena" from Shir Hashirim. My first square was the Hebrew words, stencilled in white.
The second square was a nod to my singing days in a classical choral piece by Yehezkel Braun. The abstract notes were white beads on machine stitched lines. [link to youtube]
The third square was a nod to my Yiddish studies at the University of Toronto. It was the biblical passage from an actual "tzena u're-ena" book. Tzena u're-ena books were books written in Yiddish for women who were prevented from learning original hebrew texts and could only learn from a "reasonable facsimile" in Yiddish. I photocopied the passageTzena and printed it onto silk, and attached it to a background made from one of my father's ties. [link to IBN]
The fourth square was a nod to my love of folk music. "Tzena Tzena Tzena" was written by Issachar Miron in 1941 to lyrics by Yechiel Chagiz while serving in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army in British Mandate Palestine. Pete Seeger was introduced to the song in 1948 in New York, brought it to the Weavers, and the rest is history. I represented Pete Seeger's banjo with a circle and shiny threads.[link to youtube]
I finished off my final square with a "word art" piece in Hebrew, from the original text, printed onto silk. [link to word art]
So now I had five small quilts and had to turn them into an accordion book.
I stitched the five quiltlets together into a row. Then I took a piece of cotton suede fabric and sewed it envelope style as a backing.
Now the tricky part. For the book to stand alone outside of the shadow box, it needed a stabilizer. I cut five squares of Timtex (flexi-firm) stabilizer approximately 6 1/4" square. I slipped the first one into the envelope, then sewed on the stitch line,
and continued in the same manner for the next four squares. I stitched the envelope closed.
As the Timtex is not connected from one square to the next, it can be folded accordian style.Questions?
My next book is very simple. Years ago, I took part in am IJQ postcard exchange on the theme of Purim.
The reason I never took place in another postcard exchange was: what to do with the postcards? They are too lovely to throw out but what can you do with single postcards?You can make them into an accordian book. I took invisible thread (the clear plastic type) and zigzagged the cards together.
Now I can pull them out at Purim, stand them up on the sideboard, and enjoy.
The final book I am showing you I made specifically for this presentation. I wanted to show how you can take individual pieces and bind them together to make a book. It can be a stitch book or memory book or, in my case, a book of necktie leftovers.
I wanted to try a technique using coil binding so that the pages of the book lie open flat. And you can use any size page you want (postcard size, full page, etc.) The basic premise of the coiled book
is the page piece, sewn onto a folded piece of card stock, and the card
stock is then coil bound. So obviously, unless you have a binding
machine at home, you will have to take it to a Staples or UPS store to
have it bound. Or you could just punch holes in the card stock and put in rings.
You may remember I showed you how to use necktie pieces to dye a silk scarf. The pieces can apparently be used to dye again, but I instead used them to make fabric beads. But how many beads does one person need? So I was left with these long narrow strips. I tried weaving with them but it was too fiddly. So I took a piece of steam-a-seam fusible and fused the necktie strings to it. And it looks like this framed
Why couldn't I use them in a book? I could and did!
I was using Timtex (the soft kind) for the "batting". What would I use for the front and back of each page? I went into my "failed" projects bin and pulled out snow dyed silk pieces. I sewed the strings in a few strategic places to the dyed silk et voila - page one's front done.
Now I also have a container of what I call "kishkas" - these are the necktie linings. I had started doing stuff with them and this page in one of the examples - I zigzagged pieces of duppioni silk remnants onto the lining and zigzagged it onto another dyed silk failure. Then I zigzagged together the three pieces (front with the strips, batting, back with the duppioni pieces).
Then I cut from a file folder (i.e. cardstock) a 2 1/2" strip. I folded it lengthwise in half so each "half" is 1 1/4" wide. I then marked a line at the 3/4" mark on the bottom half and inserted the page up to the line, folded the top half onto the bottom and sewed on the sewing machine with the longest length stitch (if the stitches are too close together the perforations will make the cardstock more susceptible to tearing).
Onto the next page. I decided not to use Timtex but to use regular quilter's batting instead.
Each tie has a lining piece of silk at the top and bottom tie triangles. I hadn't decided what to do with those pieces (not true - I decided but it failed...) so I cut out 2 1/2" squares of lightweight iron-on interfacing to the backs of these triangles, cut out the squares and sewed them into a square, and lightly quilted them. On the back of this page, I sewed on a tie shaped piece of necktie lining and attached necktie beads to it. On this page, instead of zigzagging front and back together, I envelope sewed it.
For my last page (yes, it's only three pages - I ran out of steam) I sewed pieces of the triangle linings onto a tie shaped lining, and sewed onto that some of the tie labels.
And for the back, I took one of the tie shaped lining pieces and sewed onto it the tie pieces that hold the back necktie piece in place. This one I again zigzagged, not too well, the three pieces together.
What I learned from this exercise is that I should probably make sew the cardstock onto the "naked" Timtex pages and then decorate the pages - otherwise it is too difficult to manipulate under the sewing machine.
All in all, the presentation was well received. I promised to provide resources which I will do in a separate post.
Sarah Homfrey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTz6xXyvq-c
https://www.annwoodhandmade.com/stitch-book-100-day-project/
