handmade notebook cover – Felting and Fiber Studio

Pink Diary Cover

January 21, 2014 zedster66 Comments 26 comments

I managed to finish the diary cover for my sister this week. Last time I posted I’d got as far as making pink batts and choosing the embellishments. I finished the layout the next day.

I wanted to create a feel of lots of different textures, but without it looking like it was ‘piled’ with embellishments. So after adding the fancy fibres and the cotton, silk, organza and synthetic fabrics, I added wisps of wool that I pulled from the batts. Close up of embellishments:

It took a long time to do the layout, so I didn’t get chance to felt it until the next day. This is the piece when I’d just felted it and rinsed it:

I was taking lots of photos of the felting process for a tutorial and I think by repeating some of the steps for photos, I ended up fulling it a lot more than I usually do! It did shrink quite a lot.

Coincidentally, it shrunk width-ways to the exact size I needed for my notebook cover. This is a photo of the pieces cut out: Main piece, the front and back pieces for the closure flap, and the strip to cut two straps.

I didn’t have the right colour thread for blanket stitching, so I made my own by splitting some lengths of embroidery floss in half and joining some pinks and lilac shades together. This is the front all finished

And this is the back:

It does remind me a bit of a toilet roll cosy and I’m sure Barbara Cartland would have loved it, let’s just hope my sister does 🙂

Nuno and Bamboo

November 27, 2013 zedster66 Comments 9 comments

I found time last week to make a notebook cover from the bright flowery nuno piece I recently made. The finished felt piece turned out bigger than I’d expected and I did play with the idea of making a passport style shoulder bag. Maybe if I’d had a nice button or some Delrin clips I would have, but in the end I thought a book cover would look nice. This is the front:

And this is the back:

I usually leave the natural felt edges on the inside front flap, but when I worked out the best position of the felt for the cover, it ended up on the inside back :

So the ‘neat’ cut edge is on the inside of the front.

I’ve been mostly working on some ideas using natural wools and fibres recently. As much as I like nuno and brightly coloured Merino, the natural shades of wools and fibres and the different textures and properties of the wools and fibres and how they work together is a bit of an obsession for me 🙂 I made a few pieces with different bamboo fibres this week. Some were just samples as I worked out the crinkles of ideas and played with the fibres to get the look I want. This is a sample piece I made using black bamboo blended with black merino:

This piece worked out just how I imagined and wanted it. It’s 18.5 mic Merino with bamboo staple fibre for subtle shiny texture:

What have you been working on lately?

New Diary Cover

October 28, 2013 zedster66 Comments 8 comments

Before the black Merino and multi fibre notebook cover I made recently, I’d started to make a greeny blue one for a diary. The first batt I was happy with on my drum carder was blues and greens so I used this for the top layer. As well as Merino, I added some texturey Icelandic wool, and locks of Bluefaced Leicester and Wensleydale that I dyed a few years. I added lots of surface embellishments: silk fabric, cotton gauze, organza, silk top, silk throwster’s waste, some synthetic curly fibres and some more of the dyed texturey, curly wools.

It was too large to get a decent clear ‘after felting’ photo, but this is almost all of it:

This notebook took even longer than the black one as it was the first one I’d made like this, using felt off cuts for the straps and hand sewing all around the edges:

I machine stitched the smaller strip onto the wide closure strip

And I machine stitched the two pieces onto the back

But I finished all the edges with blanket stitch

I kept the natural edge of the felt for the inside front flap, I like the little detail of pink and yellow on the silk at the top.

New Notebook Cover

October 22, 2013 zedster66 Comments 10 comments

I thought I’d make myself a felt cover for a ring binder notebook I’ve started using for notes about batts, fibre packs and etsy listings. I made a piece of felt a few weeks ago from merino and embellishment fibre blends. I used lots of different fibres: Milk Protein fibre, Hemp, Flax, Ramie, Banana, Bamboo top and fibre; Viscose top and fibre, Trilobal nylon, Acrylic laps, Plastic fibre and Egyptian cotton. This is the whole piece after felting:

I recently made another notebook and made the straps to go through the Delrin clips from felt, and it looked really nice, so I thought I’d do the same for this one. This is the front:

It took hours to sew (at least 9 episodes of Hawaii Five – 0!) because I machine stitched the straps into place on the back (with my hand operated Singer), and then hand sewed everything else and finished off the edges with blanket stitch.