Bird Book

I have taken a small break from work to make a book cover.  It's a present (possibly won't be a surprise now...) so I thought I'd make use of a Stencil Girls Swallows stencil, some lovely hand-dyed fabric, DeColourant my long suffering sewing machine.

First I pressed the fabric and then stencilled a bird design around the lower part of the fabric with DeColourant.  I have reviewed this product before and didn't get on very well with the DeColourant Spray but I do like the bottled stuff.

After sponging this on and then ironing, the design came out really well.  I then launched into stitching the fabric.  The gorgeous fabric was bought from the Festival of Quilts from Jo Lovelock who sells the fabric under Alter Ego www.handdyedfabrics.co.uk

 This was the design overall for the whole piece.  I decided to make a book cover that you can fit a bought notebook into due to time constraints.  On a good day, I would have cut the paper and sewn them all in.

The beautiful fabric had lots of interesting patterns on it, so it was easy just to stitch around those.

For each bird, I stitched around in grey cotton. to give the impression of feathers.

On the edge of the book, I sewed seed beads in a blanket stitch.

All done!

Swallows Stencil copyright The Red Door Studio L.L.C., Artist: Tracie Lyn Huskamp, Manufacturer: www.StencilGirlProducts.com

Merry Christmas Sweaters

Due to be reviewed in the December issue of Workshop on the Web is Sue Stratford's book Merry Christmas Sweaters.

A book packed with those special Christmas designs that everyone in the family (EVERYONE!!!) can now sample the delights of.

I always like to promote a good cause, and one of the designs in the book, the Snowman, has been chosen by Save the Children to promote Christmas Jumper Day on Friday 13 December.  In return for a £1 donation, everyone is encouraged to wear a Christmas Jumper and celebrate Christmas kitsch.

You can access the pattern from the Search Press website:

Merry Christmas Sweater pattern

The sweaters included in the book are all good patterns, and you have set sizes for Adults and Children on different pages, which I am told helps prevent making different parts of the sweater in different sizes.