Book is finished!

I wish I had kept up with the number of hours it literally took to create this book. I have been working on it daily 8 days and several of those were all day. Here is the finished book. The photos are the greatest but you get the idea.

Things I learned... suede is a bear to sew. It's not as easy as I'd thought it would be so I spend hours sewing with a pair of pliers. When making my cover this time, I allowed for fabric overhangs from the pages when deciding on a size. I wouldn't do that next time... I'd let all the stuff hang out past the cover. And, the number one thing I'd do next time is make sure the book is in the right position when attaching the cover... I realized after it was too late, that I'd added the cover on (which was done last) with the book pages upside down and backwards. I can't begin to tell you how sick I felt. I had to sit down and take a cry before calling Fran, my best friend, to calm me down. There was no way to re-do the book once I'd added the cover because I'd glued the covers to the suede before stitching it. It's permanent. At this moment, I'm glad my strength in my art is creating balance. I spent so much time on each page making sure it was not only balanced in composition but color elements as well. So, unless someone is REALLY looking, no one would know the pages are upside down. But it makes me sick to look at them. I planned the composition so carefully the "right" way. Oh well, this was my first fabric book, the first made like this, so it was a learning process... but oh, the time it took to make. It was a costly lesson that I'll never let happen again!

Anyway, if you were wondering about the front cover, the cut out rectangle contains a glass vial suspended which contains cactus needles. On the inside of the cover, I added a loose "flap" of sheer black fabric so it would show as a back drop for the cut out window making the needles show up better.

This book looks completely different than my original vision for it all except the construction of the book. That turned out to be exact.

Tomorrow, I have a weekend workshop with DJ Pettitt and Deryn Mentock at The Paper Studio in Tempe and I'm very excited. I have my things ready to go. Because of the drive, I have an early morning so I'm going to eat something and go to bed!