water soluble stuff

As usual, I have been busy, but not blogging.  Mostly, I have been running classes at the community house and trying to look after my DH who is in a lot of pain and finding it hard to be idle.
I did, however find some time to make a few little motifs using soluble interfacing and free motion.

The butterfly is a bit tatty because I only went over it once, and I wasn't wearing my eye glasses!,  I used a metallic thread in the top and bottom, so that they would look the same on both sides, but overall I am happy with the effect.  The gold thread is from a large cone which I picked up at the recycle depot, but it sews really well and I love it.  A little bit of bling goes a long way!
I have also been working on my journal quilts.  I have been making journal quilts from random drawings and sketches.  Obviously, the drawing is quick - it takes a little longer to interpret them in thread, but it also gives me something to work on when the muse is not cooperating.

Some I like, some I don't, but it's just some playing, really.
I had my old flag book (or here) with some of my old journal quilts at the gallery on the weekend, and decided to make a new book to hold all of them.

It is quite a bit larger than my old book and I have made the accordions quite wide, so I have room to write what each quilt is about.

Butterflies and flags

 Well, I am finally back from AQC and I had a great time, but I am totally exhausted and haven't finished unpacking,  so more later.

This ATC is made from painted watercolour paper, layered with a butterfly stamped on tissue, a few strands of lurex and a charm with a resin half globe.  I love how the tissue paper becomes transparent when glued down with medium(or PVA).


Today I will show you the flag book I have made to hold my Journal quilts, which are all 5 in.

I used some thick pastel paper, which is secured with a ribbon.

I left lots of extra width on the pastel paper, so that the book can expand.  At the moment, the paper wraps around the bundle a few times.

And this is how the quilts look when the flag fold is open.  I showed another flag book here.

seaweed and flags

This is a tiny needlefelted ATC, that seemed to be of the ocean floor, so I added a little seahorse.
Except for the charm, everything was from my scrap box - So technically, this is green.  See more green here.

On to other things.  Someone asked me what I did with all my samples.  Sometimes I play with them and make new things.
This is one of those times.

OK, a book, but the covers were cut from an old fabric paper and molding paste.collage.

Inside are more samples.  These are painting effect samples that I made into tags.  But wait, there's more!

When you pull the covers apart, one set of tags goes one way and the other set goes the other way and the all (mostly) lie flat.  This is called a flag fold book.  If you look it up on youtube, you will find lots of videoes about it, but I was finally inspired to do it by Handmade Book Essentials a new workshop from Interweave.

You can see here, it is basically a fan fold with the tags added.

The trick is to make the fan tall enough for two tags, plus a bit more, and to alternate where the tag goes.  For instance here you can see the top tags all face to the back and are all placed pointing left on the top left of an open "spread".  The bottom flags all have faces to the front, pointing right on the bottom right of the open fan.  It all sounds very complicated, but it really isn't very hard and is a great effect when you open it!

I put a piece of ribbon under the back cover before I glued it on -  and this is another point.  Front and back covers are not connected - there is no spine, which is why you need to be able to tie it up.  If there were a spine, the flags would not happen.
Wow, it's so complicated to write down, when it only took ten minutes to make.


So,