The theme for this month in my fabric pages is "Places". What a wonderful creative journey I've enjoyed and agonised over. I ended up with 2 double sided pages; one became the front cover of a journal and the other, the back cover.
The front cover carries the title "Going Places". This page gives glimpses of my early memories of going for drives and outings from our home in Rockhampton. All the kids bundled into the car and off we'd go! The mountain range, the meandering Fitzroy River, the big bull, an icon of the town. The street we lived in ran straight down to the river and my school was just walking distance away. Below is the whole front page. Lots of machine stitching on a variety of prints.
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| Front Cover |
Turn over and the inside page reflects my "Happy Places" - ocean, sand, gardens, home, Christmas, rolling green fields, star studded sky. A collage with lots of colour and use of prints, a combination of hand and machine stitching, crafted wire shapes, fabric scraps from dresses made long ago, a double weave test piece.
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| Happy Places - verso of front cover |
Now to the back cover. The inside page features Canberra, a place I've both visited on holidays and lived in. Autumn colored fabric forms the background with a free motioned rough outline of the inner city's original street layout. Stitched and stamped patches each show a place in Canberra.
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| Canberra page |
The back cover is a collage of stamps, each featuring a place in Australia. The stamps were glued and stitched onto a foundation of cotton fabric supported by heavy interfacing. The outline of Australia is stitched by hand - apologies to Tasmania as I ran out of space!
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| Back cover |
So there are the four pages viewed individually. To bring them together, a felt spine decorated with machine stitching is attached to front and back. Paper pages in 3 page signatures cut to size are machine stitched across the spine.
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| Felt spine with decorative machine stitching |
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| Signatures viewed from above |
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| First paper page |
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| Decorative stitching between each signature |
I loved how this journal evolved, challenging me to try out different ideas. It certainly was nothing like the idea I started with!
Enjoy your creative journey!
Love
Cara
Cara, you're a true inspiration and you've created
ReplyDeletepages of treasured memories that sing with colour. Love the way you made the spine so soft yet sturdy to delicately hold the pages.
Thanks Helen. Now to fill the pages with more treasures!
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