Button painting tutorial

12/14/2012

Look...a book!..well almost.....

Today has been the most wonderful day since I tried to rearrange my face with an immovable object.  It's snowing, I'm home, I've been almost pain free all day,  I've some foot-stompin, honky-tonk country music on Pandora, and I've been working on my Morris book for about 5 hours... mostly at the sewing machine...

If you look closely as you pass my chair while I'm on my sewing machine, you will see a little fat, black butt sticking out from under the chair... He dozes with his nose right next to my foot.  My dog loves me!!!!!






Of course the first problem I ran into is that the 16 blocks weren't all exactly the same size...  In fact there was a considerable difference from the largest to the smallest..  The obvious and easiest solution was to cut all of them down to the size of the smallest block... BUT I liked the larger size so I trimmed out all the  blocks (on the left) and then cut them all to the same size.



Heaven knows I didn't want limp pages so each page is lined with a piece of light weight felt...  The front and back covers have the felt plus a piece of very heavy fusible interfacing. You all know how great hindsight is ..right?  Well I get to this stage and realize that I want the cover pages larger...  I could have planned for this in the beginning but didn't.... but I'll remember when I make my next book...





You can see I trimmed the covers out with the tiny polka dots and I'm preparing to sew  on the bias binding.  It will take me several days to get all the bias binding sewn by hand...







I hadn't shown you the inside of the back page...  It is a "pocket" page..  It will hold the laminated narratives for all the pages...












The blocks are back to back in groups of two pages.. twelve pages besides the covers. Since my book will be so thick I will need a spine and I marked it so I can evenly space the pages...  But I didn't want the interfacing showing on the inside of the book and it's impossible to mark the black  polka dots...  I stitched along the marked lines with white thread in the bobbin so I can see where to stitch the pages..


My garden is always full of critters and it supplies food for them throughout the winter... I walk to the window often to watch them... After a fresh snow like today I see little tracks everywhere.
And by the way this post is a milestone of sorts...it is #1200.

5 comments:

  1. It sounds like you had a great day. The book is in the finishing stages, no pain, snow (I'm not sure this one is great), critters to watch, and a sewing buddy. Sounds good. I finished my mukluks yesterday except for the crepe soles which I will get DH to cut out for me today. My hands definitely need a rest. Today I'm baking my give-away cookies.

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  2. A wonderful stitching day! The book is looking great Gerry. Love to see the snow and critters. We rarely get snow here on the coast and I just love it.

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  3. So glad you are feeling better. Book is looking good. I like how the blocks looked framed. Can't wait to see what you do in 2013.

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  4. Pain free is good to hear. Sounds like you are improving. I admire you being able to use the black and white polka dots, squares, etc. whenever I see black and white in small atterns my eyes start to dance and it all blurs.

    Yu are doing a great job on this and it will be wonderful for someone in the family to inhert someday.

    Keep getting better and no more falls. Have a very Merry Christmas.
    My usual hug to Morris.

    Hugs

    FredaB

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  5. Glad you are feeling better. Your book is amazing...and the picture of your garden warms my heart.

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