fabric journals

Honestly forgot about this group and i apologize! (Any Calgarian/Canadian members yet???)

I've been doing a fair number of fabric journals and pages!







All of the above are for a Yahoo arch page exchange, one a month for a year.

Below is a Book/Bundle "Emergency Self Esteem Kit"--hot textile techniques, found objects, hot foil pen, bones, beads, burning, paper, textiles.







Below, rusted Lutrador with coffee stained and dyed pages, flower stitcher and hand embroidery



The Pam Sussman book is the one that started me on the Book Mobile :} more than a year ago. I have a lot of the other books mentioned in a previous entry here, but would also really recommend Beryl Taylor's Mixed Media Explorations, chockful of goodies and clear instructions.

Here's my latest (literally -- I'm 6 months behind!) Bead Journal page.



It reflects a time of great stress when we sold our house and found ourselves with 30 days to find and buy a new place (within our smaller budget, of course) and be all moved in. I often felt like everything was hitting us at once, but now we're settling in, slowly unpacking, and doing well in our new neighborhood, which we like way better than where we used to live.

Is there a certain stitch you use to get your seed beads so close together? 

I wanted to add some books I've acquired both recently and within the last year or so; these are either inspirational or helpful for doing textile journals.

Beading on Fabric - encyclopedia of bead stitch techniques by Larkin Jean Van Horn, Interweave Press. ISBN 1-59668-004-0 This is more about embellishing a surface with beads than anything else.

Fabric Art Journals - making, sewing, and embellishing journals from cloth and fibers by Pam Sussman, Quarry Books. ISBN 1-59253-196-2 (pbk) Covers basic construction of books and a few ideas for embellishment.

Stitched Texile Collage - innovative designs for textured surfaces by Lucille Toumi, A&C Black Publishers Ltd. ISBN-13 978-0-7136-8410-0 This is mostly about embellishing the textiles with a variety of methods, from water soluble stabilisers and machine stitching to quilting, beading, embroidery, etc.

Anyone else have book suggestions that relate to fabric journals?

Hi all, in an effort to get a little more activity here, I'd like to get some suggestions for tags for the community.

Thus far I have:

beads
quilting
paint
printing
embroidery
textile
goldwork
metallic

Any others to suggest? Thanks ^_^

Beginning, about 3/14/08


Finished 3/21/08

Here's the next BJP page, still needing to have the edges evened out and some threads trimmed, but essentially done. I'm doing my best to work faster so I can catch up with the project at some point.

Here's the page, finally finished. I'll start the next one very soon -- tonight or tomorrow. It was really interesting, working with all those greens.

Here's the start of the next BJP page. I hadn't used rhinestones in a long, long time, and I found some, so there they are. The design is from a piece of agate I recently rediscovered in the unpacking. I'm tryi8ng to work faster so I can get caught up sometime before the project ends in June.

Here's the better scan of the previous page:



The colors are more like what passes for reality around here. I'm very happy to have the scanner back in operation.

here's part 1, before the move


finished (more or less) today

Well, everything happened to me between last post and now. I drove across the country to Chicago to be with my mother for her last days, found out all kinds of stuff about how she led her life and made decisions for me that I never knew... The drive back was full of cursing and yelling, but I'm the better for it all. (but it's a good thing I was alone in the car...! XD) Got home and went into "sell the house" mode, though with our slow real estate market we didn't sell until late November and now live in a house less than half the size but better built than the previous one. The cats have adapted, and I suppose I will, too. The move was a nightmare, as most moves are. I started this in November, just before we had to really start packing and looking for our new place. It took until I set up my workspace last week to get down to finishing it up. This is a quick snapshot, which I'll replace with a better scan once I get the scanner attached... (first I have to find it!)

Here's the finish of the July page.



It came out a lot more complex that I had thought it would when I started out. I just let the design grow, and it did. This was also an exercise in emphasizing colors I don't usually use a great deal, and it was interesting to work that way.

Now... on to August and September.

Here's more progress on my July Bead Journal Page. Don't know when I can post again, since I'm about to leave town and take a mega road trip across country to be with my mom. But I'll still be working on this, and maybe I'll be able to start the August page, as well.



I'll be back home in 3 or 4 weeks, and will check in with y'all then.

Here is my (late) start on my July page for the Bead Journal Project.



I'm just letting this one grow as it will.

( several pictures of textile pages for a swap )

I figured out how to straighten out my diagonal meteor lines, and made a couple more changes. Here is the final final version of my June Bead Journal Project page.

For my Mother's birthday, which was a month and a bit ago--Hey, it's TRADition that we're late sending to each other :}


Back cover:



http://arleebarr.squarespace.com/designjournal/2007/7/3/better-late-than-never.html

Here's my June page, all done, essentially. I'm wanting to straighten out the meteor trails at some point, maybe by running some wire through them, but basically, I'm done.



I'm exploring lots of different things in this piece: movement, growth, the sudden appearance of miracles or disasters (I see these as two sides of the same coin...), beginnings, mysteries It's real different from most of my stuff, but has turned out to be a mostly optimistic piece.

I'm getting closer and closer to finishing this. It's been through some interesting phases to get to this point, and still a bit more to go...

Here's a bit more progress on the first page of my Bead Journal...

Cover for my BJP:

I recently joined the Bead Journal Project, a commitment to do one bead embroidery piece each month to create a journal of beads on fabric for the year. We all started more or less on the 1st of June. Here's my first page, so far.



I'm in the process of selling our house for a smaller, less expensive and more art-friendly one (yet to be located...), and dealing with long-distance family stuff regarding my elderly and ill mom. You'd think this would be exactly the wrong time to take on a major art commitment, but... Sitting and beading every so often has really helped my (failing) sanity. We have about 2 weeks to pack up the house and do the final prep for sale... I dread the phone calls from my step-brother about some new crisis or other... And I can create a calm and lovely oasis for a few minutes with beads and thread. Ahhhh! Heaven!