file under misc: the year long fabric art journal

After seeing some amazing, blank paged, fabric art journals (that quickly sold out) I couldn't get the idea of it out of my head. So I made my own, deciding that I'd make a few pages to see how I liked working on fabric. I did a few pages, decided I enjoyed the challenge of it - there's so many things you can do to fabric that are outside my art comfort zone - that I decided to make it a year long experiment.

I still need a cover - I'm going to do fabric covered chipboard so that when I put it with the rest of my finished art journals, it will have some support. I'm going to do divider pages, by month, like you'd find in a regular planner, that way I can track my pages and keep them somewhat organized. The idea of seeing what I've done month to month, work wise, appeals to me.

My pages are just muslin with some Wunder-Under in between to give them a little stiffness. It's 2 8.5x11 squares sewn right sides together, then flipped out. I'm using the decorative stitches on my machine to give them a border/sew the seam closed. They are not perfect but they work very well! As for binding, I've gone with grommets and rings, that way I don't have to worry about space as it grows and won't have to struggle with some kind of traditional way to bind a book.

The very first page I did. Also the very first time I've ever used a stencil and spray successfully at the same time. Typically when I use a stencil and spray I end up with a dotted mess. (For some reason, this page is slightly larger than the rest of them.)