Time for a change

Towards the end of last week I was starting to feel that I had 'sewing overload' and felt the need to spend some time doing something different. I have not really done any sketchbook work for a while so I was toying with the idea of playing in one of them when along came the DMTV newsletter and I spotted the perfect thing. Handprinted Sketchbooks. So I signed up for the videos and on Monday I made a start.

The idea is that you start off by taking a very large - A1 - sheet of good quality white paper and play around printing and stencilling on to it. Now of course those large sheets of white paper that I put carefully away were nowhere to be found! So instead I laid out 8 sheets of handmade cotton rag paper onto a plastic sheet and printed on to them instead.

My print blocks - that old sandal has been hanging around for a couple of years waiting for just such an occassion.

So I printed over one side of the paper and left it to dry.

Then I turned the pages over and did some more printing.

Once they were dry came the exciting bit - each page is carefully torn in half. Then the half pages are folded in half and put together four at a time to form the book.

And at this point I was so happy as the pages were looking great all together. The next stage was to stitch the pages together and into some covers and hey presto, one new sketchbook!

It was much quicker and easier than I had thought. I have just used mount board for my covers as I intend to make a fabric slip cover for the book so the board will not be on show.

I am so pleased that I used the rag paper as I love the soft edges it gives to the page - now to pluck up courage to go in and start working into some of the pages!!

It's FNwF tomorrow - still time to sign up so if you fancy joining in then sign up here  - hope to see you there.