As promised, a post about my little hand stitched book.

What do books mean to you?

To me a book is something to be treasured. Books have somehow woven themselves into the fabric of my life. As a child with a big imagination, they offered new worlds to explore. Later, in my teens and struggling through years of chronic illness they offered an escape. As time moved on my health returned and I fell in love, books offered new ideas and interests to be explored together, in our first home.

Soon after that was the beginning of 24 years of reading aloud each day, to my children. So many stories shared together, so many precious memories of quiet times, cuddles and laughter, or tears shared in the sad parts. 

Favourite books are often quoted throughout the day in our house. Because they have been shared over and over with each child in turn, we all know the words, we can all share the joke. Five children, all very different, with different interests, but books will always be a common ground.

Books, in this house, hold a special place in our hearts.

For some time I have thought about making a book. I made some little concertina books, last year, as momentoes of special days out, in our first year of living in Angus. The more of my children reach adulthood, the more I feel the need to hold on tightly to those memories of the times that we have spent together.

But I wanted to create a stitched book. I don’t have any aspirations to be a writer. I enjoy writing, I enjoy words, but textiles is where I express myself most freely.

So I set about making a hand-stitched, quilted book.

I know some people like to plan things things out meticulously before starting a project like this, but it’s not really my way of doing things. I get a rough idea of how it might work and then I start making. I will undoubtedly meet problems along the way, but that’s how I learn. For me, too much planning in the initial stages can mean that the energy of the project gets lost.

I did go as far as to fold a piece of paper into a book and sketch out the idea for each page.

I have been using up fabrics from past projects and repurposing fabrics from charity shops and the scrap store, for the past few months. This project gave me the opportunity to use up some of the really small pieces!

The threads came from my stash too, except for the deep coral thread, which I found three skeins of, in the local charity shop. That made my day, because I had just run out of that very colour.

I decided to make a panel for each page. It gave me a certain amount of flexibility for the construction stage and meant that if my rather loose plan didn’t work out, all of those hours of stitching wouldn’t be lost.

Once all of the panels were complete, I stitched them onto a quilted backing strip, trimmed the edges and folded the pages to form the book – stitching them along each edge, to secure them.

Now it just needed a cover and one or two extras to make it really special.

I stitched the constructed pages onto an inside cover and added a little pocket, for keeping tiny sea treasures in. Again, this pocket was quilted and fastened with a little paper bead, which I made as part of a basketry project a few months ago.

I turned the edges of the embroidered outer cover and the inner cover, stitching them together as I worked, and added another paper bead as a fastener for the book.  I made some linen cordage, which wraps simply around the bead, holding the book closed.

It was really a delight to make, from beginning to end and I was amazed at how easily the construction stage came together.

It feels very precious, which is exactly what I hoped for, and although this one is now in my shop, I am looking forward to making more of these little books, for myself in the future – to remember special events in our family.