book wraps

I was busy before Christmas trying to make as many presents as I could for my family. I managed to make book wraps to give to my Mum and my sister. They are fabric covers to wrap your book up in when you want to take it with you. The wrap protects the book, and it looks good too!!

The idea came from Quilting Arts Magazine Issue 29 page 50, "Textural Book Wraps" by Angie Hughes. Angie's book wraps are just "to die for" and I would love to get my wraps more lacy thin like hers. I have been working on another project of Angie's from another magazine, a decorated bag. That is definitely a U.F.O. at the moment, I will post the finished product when I eventually finish it!!

The fabric of the book wrap is actually woven from strips of varied fabrics. Angie said she was looking for a use for upholstery offcuts, and weaving new fabric from old strips was the result. It is held together by being ironed onto iron-on interfacing. The ironed "fabric" was then decorated with acrylic paint and stamps, pieces of fabric and threads. Then a layer of organza is placed over the top and you take to the whole thing with your sewing machine. I crazy sewed all over the whole thing, folded one end in to be the flap that holds the book in place, added a decorative strip of fabric or ribbon at the end for a flourishy finish, and finally attached strips of recycled silk yarn for the ties to hold the book wrap closed.

art dolls

Meet Frida Kahlo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Tamara De Lempicka and Vincent Van Gogh... reinterpreted in my drawing style! The following photos are of some Artist Art Dolls that I made for a Christmas present for my niece.

That is her waving at us!!

The collection picture above shows all the bits that went into the process to make them.

I searched the internet and books first for images of the artists and their artwork and printed inspiration pages to work from (top left hand corner)

Then I drew their faces first on paper with pencil, because I thought their faces were the most important part (top right hand corner)

When I was happy with the drawing, I went over it more exactly with ball point pen, then reduced it to the size I wanted and printed it at the top of an A4 page on my printer. I then carried on the picture and drew their bodies in pencil till I was happy with those (middle images)
I drew in these lines with ballpoint pen as well, rubbed out the pencil lines, and then scanned them into Abode Photoshop Elements 6 and darkened the lines and cleaned up any messy bits with the Photoshop rubber.

I found images of their artwork that I felt represented their style of art and printed out the images and the doll drawings onto iron-on transfer paper. I then ironed the images onto some fairly fine weave fabric that I found in my stash (bottom right hand images)

I clipped the images of the drawings with bulldog clips over strong pieces of cardboard, then I started painting them in with acrylic paints. When I was happy with all the colours and shading, I repeated over the lines with black Pitt Artist pen. I then carefully reironed the images between greaseproof paper, and it seemed to remelt the paint and lines back into the iron-on transfer again. I gave a small test piece a good scratch and the paint wasn't showing any signs of peeling off (Yay! that was one thing I was worried about!!) (see middle bottom images)

Next I sewed on the few little notions on Frida... the roses in her hair and the earrings. I then stiched the two sides of each doll together on the sewing machine leaving a small gap to turn through the right way. They were difficult to turn through the right way because the paint made the material very stiff and I didn't want to damage the painting either when I did it.
Then I stuffed them with some Dacron and hand stitched the opening at the bottom back together (Voila! bottom left hand corner)

These are the backs of the dolls showing some of their artwork. Didn't get good closeups of the faces of the dolls because the focus was fuzzy.

I hope to make some more artists to add to her collection in the future!