Page 7 - family affair

Unlike page 5 which was very much intended as a portrait, this page was only sort of a portrait in my mind, but ultimately that's what drove the decision making. It is a sort of family portrait, this mean that despite my design having the mother figure with a fringe, that disappeared during execution.

I also made an effort to change the face shapes to be a little more similar. The children are less portrait attempts as attempts to make children look like children.

From page to cloth also varies other aspects. In a line drawing in pencil you can get away with a general sketched shape for the combined bodies of both parents, but once you put down the appliqué it made the two parents look a little odd - not just huge but wrong shaped blob combined body.

So I redrew the bodies of both parents on the reverse and then filled in the bit in between with embroidery. I also found that having them top to toe in one colour blue just looked odd. So I chose some darker colours for the trousers and filled these in with embroidery as well.

I did debate putting the upper words onto a second ribbon but due to the transparency of the fabric the ribbon would have had to cover the original word placing which wasn't what I wanted to do so I stuck to the original design.

The final decision was to add white shadowing to the upper letters to make them stand out about.

I'm not entirely convinced by the "Dad" haircut, but overall I rather like the design. and how it came out.

Page 6 - or is it 7? Baby's a fashion model

The basic design of this page was taken from a similar sketch that inspired a page in my nephew's book. This was a sketch my mother had done of I think my little brother as a baby, asleep.

To make the page more interesting I had decided to make it interactive with different outfits which could be put together on the page. To do this I sewed in place the basic design - the word balloon and the child on the page and then added velcro to the child's top and bottom and feet to allow for tops, trousers/skirts and shoes.

The only slight hitch with the basics was the writing going slightly more off course than usual despite the design being there on the back to follow.

I also decided late in the day to add in the floating "e" because technically the words should read
"Ich habe kleider und auch schuhe" but they don't because schuh has to rhyme with "du" in the previous line.

Then I set to work on the clothes. Each piece of clothing had several layers - two of felt sandwiching a paper layer for stiffness, the ribbon sewn along one edge to make it a stronger attachment, and the velcro.

I sewed the velcro to the back first, then embroidered the front, then sewed the ribbon in place while sewing front and back together. The outfits were designed to go together in any combination, provided you are willing to mix dots and stripes.

I confess having made one pair of shoes however, I lost interest and decided that I couldn't be bothered with an alternative pair.

However, having made the clothes I began to think about how to store them when they weren't attached and decided to add in a page on the back of page 6 with pockets for the outfits.

My idea for this page was

1. Furniture as theme for the pockets
2. Made of all the same fabric so as not to be too vibrant as this is not really a formal page, just a place to put the pockets.

One large pocket which should look like a wardrobe would be for the tops and trousers and skirt, a small "chest" for the shoes.

I mocked up a very simple design and then made the patches for the pockets

And carefully sewed down the ribbons for the clothes with enough ribbon to allow them to attach in the right places on the previous page.

The only thing I feel slightly bad about is that it says Schuhe, Blusen, Hose but not "rock" for skirt. I'm not sure I'm going back to add that on now though.

When I look at this purple page I hear the voice of Agent Carter, so I think I watched that a fair bit while making this. Not sure about the main page with the child on it.

A guide to the making of a special present for a special girl

Due to the proliferation of posts about what is essentially one object in parts, here is a guide to all the stages.

In short, this is my second book made of cloth, based on a German nursery rhyme taught to me by my grandmother.

• Discussion of Design
• Starting the process - transferring the designs to the cloth pages 
• Page 1 - snail
• Page 2 - mouse
• Page 3 - sparrow
• Page 4 - butterfly
• Page 5 - Oma / Grandmother
• Page 6 - baby dresses up
• Page 7 - family
• Page 8 - cross and heart
• Completing the book

Page 5 - remembering things passed

At this point I started to think about the eventual compilation of all the pages and realised something I thought I'd planned for earlier - if I used the pages as is, pages 5 and 6 were going to be back to back.

This was not at all what I'd hoped for. My aim was for pages 5 and 6 to be a double page spread, with the Oma (grandma) on one page talking to the child on the opposite page who is responding to her question. I did not at all want for them to be back to back with each other.

I debated starting the first page of the story inside the front cover, but I didn't really like that as people don't tend to look there first for page 1.I decided I'd have a blank page on the back of page 1 which should pass semi unnoticed.

This particular page is important to me because it includes a sort of homage to my own Oma, because she was the one who taught me this nursery rhyme and because I love her.

Despite the fact the fabrics were not super stretchy for some reason  when I cut the speech bubble out and then pinned it on, it strangely shrunk. I'm not sure how obvious this is from the reverse.

It meant I shifted the writing slightly to fit in the smaller space. You can also see that the head of the Oma move slightly and the feet moved up although on the whole it is more or less in place as I planned.

You can also see that things have got kind of bumpy at the back. Again, not entirely sure how this happened except I probably should have put in more pins.

 However, from the front everything has worked out looking OK. You can see below that the page is a bit bumpy but looks fine. I had intended her whole chair to be applique but the fabric chosen was too thick to use for the arm of the chair on the right so I tidied up some of the details with embroidery instead.

 My Oma often sat in quite a high upright chair like this when I was growing up. I rather like how she came together.

When I sew I like to "watch" tv, by which I mean listen with some peripheral watching and occassional looking up. Podcasts also go down well. For this particular page, I did a lot of the sewing of the Oma while listening to the recorded google hangouts for Vaginal Fantasy Romance Book Club.

This records the last of catch up as I've barely started the next page. I have a few more making of pics to add in to the blog but there will be at least a brief interruption before [not very] regularly scheduled programming returns.

Page 4 - smell the flowers

This is perhaps one of the simplest concepts yet, I couldn't think of another way to play with the concept of butterfly wings except to make them flapping or above the page.

As a result I didn't take a lot of pictures of the progress.

Again fabric created the main complication. The wings are made from a stretchy fabric I think meant for swim suits. I used it on the cover of a previous book.

Another problem I'd not thought through was the fact that with a very pale yellow cotton sheet background, the design on the back would show through. Normally this wouldn't be an issue as it would be covered up by the appliqued fabric, but in this instance, I realised after making my butterfly that because the wings were free of the back, you'd be able to see the design underneath. I didn't really want this, so I chose a really low hassle solution - red felt, of which I have a lot due to not being able to buy in a small quantity.

I made a flower shape and sewed it over the design I wanted hidden and embroidered some petal edges to hide what remained visible of the design. The flower is actually slightly loose from the back fabric, having been sewn down in a circle near the centre but will lay flat on the page so should do a good job of covering up the design.

I decided to put some padding in the wings which has given them a bit of a cuddly appearance but I'm quite happy with it all the same. Due to the fatness of the wings, I also ended up making the head and the end part of the body free from the cloth as it worked better that way.

On to the next page!

Page - 3, really not that naughty

In the UK page 3 typically refers to the fact that the Sun has a topless model on its page 3 of the tabloid. Mine is a lot more decorous, involving a sparrow and a biplane rather than anything else.

As always I was looking at a fun way to reinterpret something pretty basic. Please don't ask how feathers connect to a biplane. It's just the way my mind worked.

The biggest challenge here was the fabrics. The basic background fabric was actually multiple layers of a very transparent cloth, and the plane was made out of some extremely stretchy fabric.

It rapidly drove me a little distracted as you had to hold it in place and there's a limit to the number of pins you can use on something so small, specially as the pins at the edges are just where you want to sew.

I really regretted not putting interfacing onto the plane which would have helped a lot in keeping its shape.

One of the other problems I face is that I don't own infinite colours of thread. When is started sewing down the plane I'd found what I thought was the nearest colour I had. I then found I had something much closer, so I sewed over the top to hide the other colour stitching

I then used a brown to create shadows and details. However, as you can see here the brown X of the wing behind the brown sparrow, even though they are different browns was too indistinct.

So, having used red for the propeller and the cockpit I added a bit of red to the Xs on the wings to make them more of a contrast with the sparrow.

The final problem I had was that the fabric seemed to be fraying at a rate of knots. So to prevent the fabric from disappearing I sewed ribbons over the edges to hem them .

The final page - "Der sperling feine federline" - the sparrow has fine feathers.

For interest I was watching a lot of Jessica Jones while making this page.

Page 2 - drunkeness and debauchery....maybe not

I may have been slightly tipsy when I started work on this page, and this may have been the cause of my initial mistake, although to be honest I'm entirely capable of making a mistake without combining alcohol and sewing.

I chose red for the basic colour of this page because it reminded me of theatres I've been to. I'm not sure which one in particular but somehow it said "theatre" to me.

First thing was to sew down the large white area of the box office, then I sewed down the head of the ticket seller and the mouse attending the opera.

This is when I made my big mistake, I placed the body of the mouse on the sheet from the front thinking I'd got it right or maybe I placed it while flipping from back to front, who knows now, I was tipsy, and I sewed down at high speed the furcoat of the mouse attending the opera. Having finished, I flipped over to see the following : the furcoat was on upside down.

Any sensible person would have undone the stitching and placed it again. I'm not that sensible, I'm also very lazy and fortunately for me the mouse's head was roughly equidistant from the top and the bottom meaning, as you can see below, the end result was the design ended up a mirror image of itself.

The only pain was resituating the writing on the reverse. Really all in all it was not a disaster, and although sometimes the design is meant to face a certain way, this isn't one of those designs. You may note that the words ticket office have disappeared, this is because it was just too small and I felt it was pretty obvious what was going on.

Photographing this page was its own challenge which I have not entirely solved. The fabric is satin-y. It means it reflects light all oddly when photographed in a way your eyes don't find problematic.

This photo is far too dark

This one, taken in daylight, has some areas more close to the real colour, but others are just not.

More pictures of more pages to come!