Friday, October 9, 2015

Art Journal Using Upholstery Fabric Swatches for the Covers


Years ago I found some upholstery swatch books in a thrift store. I've been hoarding them ever since, which not unusual for me. I have oodles of fabric, ribbon, paper, beads, sequins, stickers, magazine images...and so on. I even kept the extra wooden reeds from when I cut the length of my roman shades. I must have 150 sticks in my attic. What I am going to do with them all I don't know, but you never know when you might need a stick for a project!

fabric art journal
Anyhow, I thought I would finally put to use all the little scraps of upholstery fabric by making journal covers with them.

covers of fabric art journal
The design process takes me forever, partly as I have to organize all the little scraps by color first because I'm like that. Then I have to find the exact right combination of colors and patterns.

I sew all the scraps together and sew a lining on the other side, taking care to remember to include the elastic loop on the back for the button closure. It's a real nuisance if you forget this step as you have to rip out the stitches to slip the elastic in between the cover and liner and sew it back together. Not that I am speaking from experience. ;)

inside detail of fabric art journal
Then it is text block time. I added lots of different colored paper pages and little swatches of scrapbook paper into my pages. I discovered when working within this journal that the colored paper was a moot point as I gessoed all the pages and painted on them, so it really didn't matter what color the page was to begin with. Oh well.

side view of fabric art journal
I stitched the pages into the book using a sort of modified longstitch/pamphlet stitch and added a button from my grandmother's collection.

fabric art journal
 Ta-da! Finished product. I am about halfway done filling the pages of this book.
Here are some of the pages:
page showing artwork in fabric art journalpage showing artwork in fabric art journal
page showing artwork in fabric art journalpage showing artwork in fabric art journal

I am making some fabric journals to share and will post the link when they are ready in my Etsy shop.

Here is one ready to ship! https://www.etsy.com/listing/251497590/travel-or-art-journal-with-upholstery




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