Green Felt Longstitch Fabric Book

I am a big fan of Francis Pickering's work but I am woefully poor at drawing so I thought I would try to work around that deficit by using appliques where she would draw her botanicals.  While I was out at my favourite thrift store, I came across a silky shower curtain (outer curtain, I suppose) that had the watercolour style of flowers that I most admire and it didn't take but a moment to have it in my cart.  Add to that, the senior's day discount, and there was no question that I was going to be able to use those flowers for some purpose.

I had been planning to try my hand at a content filled book for some time.  Most of my books are just fabric covered with blank pages when they are long stitch bindings. This book, filled with appliques, stitches and quotes was going to be a first for me.

I was going to start the book at the London ON Canadian Embroiderer's Guild Winter Retreat, so I needed to try and anticipate all the materials I might want to use for the book and pack them up since the retreat location was about 2.5 hours away from my home and I would be away for 3 days and 3 nights.  It was also my first time at the retreat so I wasn't too sure what to expect.  Needless to say, I packed everything but the kitchen sink,  I tried to prepare some of the materials ahead of time, but brought extra things just in case I changed my mind because there is nothing worse than knowing you have something sitting at home when you could use it now.

I didn't think to take pictures of the process.  I was too deeply involved enjoying the space and the lack of feline helpers.  I do have pictures of the finished pages though.

The process went as follows:

I used natural unbleached cotton for my pages and made the decision to sew my pages together so that I wouldn't have to worry about stitching showing on the back.  I tore my pages to size about 10" x 15" for a double spread. I had 10 of those which would be sewn together in pairs when all the decorating was complete.  Each set would then be folded and treated like a signature when the time came to bind them.

I began by tea dyeing them.  Rather than dipping them in the tea, I sponged it on so that I could get a dappled coverage.  I wanted to soften the lightness of the natural cotton. The next step was to add colour by using dye based watercolours.  I used Koh-I-noor stackables that I got from Art Van Go.  I sponged those on as well.  The results were just what I wanted. The colours blended so well.  The pages were left to dry.

I had already prepared the flower material with Wonder Under and I fussy cut them (not the first one I applied, but I soon changed my mind).  I dry placed them until I was satisfied and them fused them.  I stitched as necessary because it was a nice crinkly material.  I loved the look of it.  I enhanced the appliques with Derwent Inktense watercolour pencils. 

At this point I tentatively matched up fronts and backs and tried folding them into signatures to see how they looked  together.  The reason for this was to make sure that I didn't have the same flowers sitting side by side (there were a finite number of different flowers to work with).  I was able to make sure that didn't happen on each double spread but when the pages were folded the back of one would be beside the front of another.  I had to find an arrangement that worked.  When I had that, I put a bit of masking tape (numbered 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b etc)  on back of each one to keep things straight.  You'll see what I mean when you see the pictures. 

The next step was to add my favourite nature and inspirational quotes with fabric markers. I collect them in a journal so I had a wide range of quotes to choose from.  When that was done, I gave everything a light coat of acrylic wax and buffed off any excess with a soft cloth.  The wax did interact a bit with the Inktense pencils in a place or two (note for future) but for the most the highlighting wasn't affected.

The wax left the cloth supple but a little firmer.  It was still easy to and hand stitching.  I used No. 8 perle cotton for my favourite stitches and just free stitched around the appliques and quotes. I made it up as I went along.

The cover is a heavy weight green felt cotton treated in the same manner as the book pages appliqued to the surface.  The closure is a button and a small hair elastic.

While the book pages were begun during the Winter Retreat, only the background preparation and applique work was accomplished during that time.  The rest of the work was done over several more weeks.