Sunday 12 May 2013

A Nice Cup of Tea...

I like it when I have some time on a Sunday evening, to just sit in my studio and play with paper.  It's nice to just make anything I want - and this evening, I did just that!

I found some fun fabric in the local sewing and patchwork supplies shop.  They stock a wide range of fabrics, mostly cottons (but also linens, silks and other stuff) mainly for quilting/patchwork.  I often go there and buy fabric and other stitching supplies; of course, the occasional impulse buy occurs.  This particular fabric is a cotton, printed with a design of vintage tea cups & saucers.  I just thought it would make a great book, so I bought a fat quarter and popped it on top of my fabrics box.  This evening, while digging around for ideas for a little project, the fabric fell down and I scooped it up.  Just what I wanted!

This is what I made (photos are not great, as they had to be taken with artificial lighting):

A Cup of Tea notebook!

These are the front and back covers - each is different.  Don't you love this fabric?
It has a silk-wrapped edge and I have attached the covers and pages with a hybrid of a Coptic stitched binding and a traditional longstitch. I used ivory linen thread and I think it looks very effective against the soft green silk.
 
The covers are lined with strawberry red art paper, to match the red in the cover fabric.  The mossy green of the silk is the same as the green teacup on the covers too.

It has forty pages of my favourite cream coloured text paper.  I had cut and folded these pages last week, so I needed a project for them.  

Overall, I think it worked out very nicely. 
 
When the sun is out tomorrow (ever hopeful!), I will take some better photos and put this in my shop, for sale.  It was made as just a bit of fun, but I hope my evening's work will make someone smile. I hope someone else likes it as much as I do!

9 comments:

  1. Really pretty. I think I might go make a few cards here soon.
    Rinda

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  2. Oh how pretty. Looking forward to getting time to play on my own stuff and not things for samples here too :)

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  3. The fabric is very pretty! I haven't been making anything personal or for the shop other than custom orders. Maybe midsummer?!

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  4. I like the contrast of the fabrics! I haven't seen this type of hybrid binding before, and it looks great too! I need to do more experimenting...

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    1. Thanks Laura, I kind of "invented" this kind of binding, but I have seen others using similar ones - I know I'm not the only person to combine different bindings; I started this last summer, for a pair of recipe books I made, that were quite large and needed something both decorative, but also strong. It works very well on both a flat spine and also a concertina spine too (which was what I did for the recipe books, to leave room for clippings & notes to be stuck inside by the customer).
      I like experimenting, it's good fun.

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  5. Hello Lizzie ! Thank you for visiting my blog. I like your book, the cups are such an interesting pattern. Book binding is very addictive and combines different skills. I wish I could draw more to have the opportunity to make more sketchbooks... LOL !

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    Replies
    1. Well, Ghislaine, you could always make sketchbooks and sell them!

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