Crafternoons 1 and 2

As it's the Holiday Weekend, and I don't have A Project to be getting on with - apart from, sigh, The Studio...

well, I'm having a little holiday from focussing on Important Things, and just having a little fun.

Mornings - walking out to have coffee and croissant, a treat and a therapy - the walking seems to make the sciatica bearable, but I doubt it's "curing" it.

Afternoons - it's been raining in the afternoons! - have become Crafternoons. During the studio sorting some abandoned projects have turned up that I don't want to just throw away - so I'm finishing them and then throwing them away. Or rather, giving them away. As long as they go away, and have a chance for "another life", I'm happy that they go. It's kinda like releasing your "babies" once they convince you that they're adults and can fend for themselves.

On my first Crafternoon I sewed the remaining 8 circles onto a vintage tablecloth that, 6 or so years ago, I thought might become a picnic cloth. The circles cover the vintage stains, and some are from fabrics that have their own history -

the front

the back

the memories

the stitching

The original plan had a nice border in the blue print, but Plan B does away with that.

For Day 2 of Crafternoons I needed to spend a little time sifting through a bag or two in the studio, and got a little sidetracked by finding a collection of material from some course or other, I simply can't remember it but am glad to be reminded of using wax frottage and india ink, or was it chinese ink, over that -

Rubbings: wax and ink; charcoal

A list of emotions

Fun with circles!

With that out of the way, what emerged was some covers from one bag and some folded paper signatures from another - a perfect pairing for making a coptic-stitch book. The size is A6, the instruction manual is Alisa Golden's Making Handmade Books -

Coptic-stitch books open up completely flat

More screenprint inside the covers, done in 2010

That's really whetted my appetite for making more, so satisfying...