Three Photo Albums for Tudor Rose

So, besides writing blog posts about my trip to Cascada Studio in Mijas, what have I been doing?  Of course, there's always housework and laundry...  but I have been busy in my own studio since my return. 

I am scheduled to teach a workshop day at Tudor Rose on 5th May.  This time, we'll be making Photograph Albums, using a traditional screw-post or cord binding.  I had to make some display samples, which are now finished and were delivered to the shop before lunch-time today. 

A photo album or scrapbook, covered with silver cardstock and pink felt.  This has silver and white cardstock pages.  The felt cover is embellished with glitter (Stickles) and the book is bound with a double ribbon tie, with a pink tassel embellishment.

A small photo album, which holds one 6 x 4.5" photo per page.  It has a front cover of 100% cotton bookcloth, with a William Morris Irises design print. The cover edges are trimmed with a cotton bookcloth, in a fabric called "Oakshot" - woven with yellow threads one way and deep red the other.   The back cover and linings are of Canford paper, in "Ocean" blue.  The pages inside are in matching Canford card.  The binding is made with two brass screw-posts.

Lastly, I made a large photograph album.  I has covers of cotton bookcloth, with a Beatrix Potter illustrations design, printed in blue.  The edges of the covers are in a beautiful powder blue dupion silk fabric, with a nice frayed edge detail.  The covers are lined with cornflower blue Murano art paper.  The pages are of Canford card, in a pale blue colour.  Each page will hold one or two 6 x 4.5" photos.

The binding is made with a stiff organza woven ribbon, in white. 

The books are displayed in the shop and will soon have a very nice label to draw attention to the course. Hopefully, the samples will catch peoples' eyes and encourage a few sign-ups for our workshop day! 

If you happen to live in the area (near Bedford) and would like to come along, go here for more details:  Tudor Rose Workshop

And, in case you missed any (and are interested!), here is the list of my Andalucian posts to date:

Andalucian Adventure - Part 1

Andalucian Adventure - Part 2

Andalucian Adventure - Part 3

Andalucian Adventure - Valentines

I plan another post soon, about the process of creating my Spanish Lemons print edition.

Happy Reading!

Crazy Sock Creatures and Silly Sock Pets - My Saturday

This Saturday I ran a workshop day at the local quilting and sewing shop.  It was "Crazy Sock Creatures and Silly Sock Pets  " and - guess what - we made Sock Creatures!

Jo-Ann made "worms"!

Also a rather adorable dog....

...with a very appealing look in his shiny eyes.

Marie came up with a wonderful pink lady bunny, with loooong eyelashes - very glam!  She also had a go at the 2-sock dog, like Becky.  Hers was quite different, with the big roses splashed over it, googly eyes and sparkly glitter-glue eyebrows. He also had a knotted wool tassel for a tail.

Leah, aged 11, came with her grandma, Chris.  They made a couple of lovely sock rabbits.  This is Leah's, which she made for a baby family member.  She was very careful with her sewing and embroidered the features, so there was nothing dangerous to the baby.   Leah also started a sock Monkey.  It was about half done by the end of the day.

Sadly, Chris didn't want me to photograph any of her items, because she hadn't finished them yet.  She made a baby rabbit too (which still needed its face), and was part-way through a very bright yellow spotted dog. 

June made a great striped cat, then a really funky rabbit.  Although they were obviously made from the same pair of socks, they look so different.  I loved them!

Last, but by no means least...  Becky first made this wonderful leopard-cat.  I love his felty nose and the pattern of the sock on his tummy.

She gave him embroidered eyes, which are so well camouflaged, but work extremely well.

Becky's next project was a dragon, which she found in one of the books I had brought along for reference and ideas.  The one in the book was green...  But Becky had 2 pairs of socks, one pink, one black, so she decided to combine them, to make this truly fabulous creature!  She split the pink sock for his head, so that she could use the black one as a mouth lining. 

She gave him toes on his feet and fingers on his paws.  Her plan was to make big teeth from white felt, plus claws for the fingers and toes.  I hope she finished it at home - it would have looked amazing!

I think the day was a success.  Everyone seemed fairly happy with their sock creatures and all had more than one project to take away with them.  They all seemed to think they would have another go at home too.  I hope they enjoyed it - I certainly enjoyed seeing the wonderful variety of creatures they came up with!

* * *

Oh, a commenter has reminded me that there are two tutorials here, on my blog, for making your own Sock Creatures!  Look here: for a cute little one-sock Bunny Rabbit and here: for instructions to make a traditional Sock Monkey.  Have fun!  

Bookbinding Workshop Day

Yesterday I taught my first ever Bookbinding workshop.  The two sock-pet workshops I taught before, were for children, but this was a course at my local sewing & patchwork shop, for adults.

I spent much of this week getting my stuff together, making notes, preparing paper-packs for the students and making some "props" for teaching (such as a "paper sizes" chart, samples of different papers and cards for students to see/feel,  books at different stages of binding, so I could demonstrate techniques etc).

I didn't think I was nervous, but I must have been, because I couldn't sleep properly for several nights and was so jumpy and tired.  That didn't help my preparations much and I managed to forget a couple of things yesterday - my crop-a-dile hole punch and a pile of book-binding books - and make a few errors too (though the students said they liked to see how I put right my mistakes, so they knew what to do when they made them!!).  Nothing major though and it all went pretty smoothly on the whole.

I had five students in total and it was a nice, relaxed and friendly atmosphere.  I'm quite glad I didn't have a lot of students to start off with, although it did reduce my course fee and the possible sales for the shop too (obviously they hope the students will buy some of their equipment/supplies from the shop, or there isn't much point in hosting a course, especially as they passed on most of the course fees to me).  I hope they felt it was worthwhile and will let me tutor there again.   The students all said they had had a nice time and enjoyed themselves. 

We made two kinds of books:

6"x4" notebooks, with fabric covers

8"x6" sketchbooks/journals, with soft covers made of fabric, stiffened with card and lined with art paper.

These are what my clever students made:

Pair of 6"x4" notebooks and 8"x6" notebook, made by Bridget

Matching notebook and sketchbook, made by Linda

Notebook and sketchbook, made by Nicolette

Matching London notebook and sketchbook, made by (Mr) Sam

Notebook and sketchbook, made by Sarah

We spent a fair bit of time on the basic techniques for making bookcloth and dealing with paper-grain, folding, cutting etc. in order to make the first notebook.  I was a bit worried that we wouldn't have time to finish the stab-stitch binding on the sketchbooks, but everyone got to a point that they were happy with and the books all looked great.  I was quite proud of them all!

I think it was a success, on the whole and I'm thinking hard about what to offer for the "follow-up" (which they seemed to expect)! 

I was at Scrap Club today.  It was nice to go and chat, relax and just do my own projects for a bit. The last few weeks have been so hectic.  I was working on "teacher presents" and cards, as well as completing a scrap page - which I will post soon.

Off to bed now, after a successful weekend! :-)