Slow Progress

I remember years ago when I first started my blog as Bloom Bake Create, I ran into one of my blog follower at our local JoAnns. I was surprised because I didn’t know her, and really had no idea I had people locally following my blog. She complimented me on my blog post and was amazed at how everything I created turned out. I told her that she was only seeing the ones that made the blog cut! There were lots of pieces that were either trashed or cut up. She told me I needed to show those things that didn’t make it and my actual process.

I think I’ve tried to do that over the years since that discussion. I even posted about the stages of the art process in this post. Sometimes from idea to completion of project takes a lot of twists and turns.

This brings me to the project I’m working on right now, a fabric photo book of our recent trip to Alabama.  I’m having a heck of a time making decisions on how I want to actually construct it. I wanted to make it like a normal book with spreads, not a ring binder. I’ve made fabric books before, but they always had paper pages or the individual pages were attached with rings. Here is one I made August 2011 as a art journal for each day of that month.

The inside pages are paper and are sewn to the fabric cover.

After spending a bit of time on You Tube looking at tutorials, I’m still trying to decide. But I’m getting closer!! I chose to use some old jeans a friend had given me as the main page fabric. I’m a member of a Facebook Denim Recycling group where someone suggested getting these electric scissors to cut the denim. OMG! What a wrist and hand saver!!

Since I want to use denim I needed to set up my machine with a denim needle and audition threads. I’ve decided on the one that is in the machine.

I also played around with some stitches. I’m using my new Baby Lock and she doesn’t like using that varigated thread in the bobbin.  That has lead me to decide on my page construction.

I’ve decided my cover will be denim, but the inside pages will be canvas with pieces of denim attached. The reason for the canvas is that when I am putting the spreads together (back to back), I can join them just with stitches and let the ends fray like the bottom sample in the above picture. I was going to stitch denim pages like the top sample above but decided that was would take too much time.

Meanwhile, I needed to decide on a size. I’ve played around with the pictures in Photoshop Elements to help determine my page size. Here is a two-page spread (8 inches x 14 inches) in PSE. I needed to print the pictures out to see how big they really are and how they will look on the page.

So if I go with the spread size above with a larger cover, this is what it will look like. It seems a bit big.

I printed a few pictures to see if I could cut down the book size. So here are three pics printed out on paper for placement. The page size is perfect. So even though the book seems big, I’m going with it.

Now before I can work on the pages I need to decide how I will bind the book. I’ll either bind each spread of four pages individually.

Or I can nest them all together. Whichever I decide will determine what pictures go on which pages. Decisions! Decisions!

Meanwhile, I made some white oak leaves out of the Lutradur that will decorate this book. The first picture is how they look after they are sewn. The second picture is after I added the heat gun. Directions for making these leaves is on this post.

Even though the progress is slow, it’s at least moving! Thanks for dropping by.