How I make a fabric art journal

 Today I am sharing the instructions for my fabric art journals. I forgot to take photos as I went along because I was filming for the video so I have a few pictures I saved from the film, sorry about the quality. You will get more detail in the video but this is a quick recap.

I start with a bunch of finished pages. It needs to be an even number of pages.  Use any technique you want to make your pages and finish off the edges neatly. Some methods I used for edges were folding over excess fabric to the back, binding, leaving felt untouched or satin stitch. I like all my pages to be the same size and I make them letter size (A4 metric) because that is easy to handle under my sewing machine.

I place a strip of fabric between the first and second pages. It doesn't matter how wide you make it but I like it to be almost the length of the pages. I match the outer edge of the pages and pin them first then pin the fabric strip in place. Stitch all the way around your two pages to hold the strip in place and connect the first two pages together.

 I place the third page on top then pin the extra piece of fabric strip to it. I add the fourth page and matching up the outer edge again I pin it in place. I stitch all the way around the two new pages and catch in the fabric strip.

 This makes a 4 page signature that is connected by the fabric strip in the middle as you can see here. At this stage it is very sturdy.  Do that to all your pages so they all become grouped together. Next we will make the spine and attach it to all those 4 page signatures.

I stack my pages and measure the width I want the spine to be. I also measure the length of the pages for the length of the spine. I cut that piece out of stiff interfacing (stiffener or vilene etc). I cut a piece of fabric to attach the spine to and also allow some excess fabric that will be inserted into the cover to hold it on.  I fold over the ends for neatness.

I pin the interfacing part of the spine, close to one edge, to the fabric strip connecting the pages of the first signature. I make sure it is pinned straight before I stitch it in place.

 The stitched signature. After the first one is attached I then add the rest, one at a time, making sure I line up the top and bottom edges so the book is square.

 When all the 4 page signatures are attached to the spine the inner part of your book will be complete and all you have to do now is attach a cover to that excess fabric strip.

I pieced my cover together here but usually I do it with one piece of fabric. This shows the interfacing applied to the fabric cover, heavy stiffener front and back but light stiffener on the spine area. I did the cover interfacing the same size as the pages. The cover fabric I measured by wrapping the material around the closed book. Do not open the book flat and take a measurement because it will be too short for the book to close.

I stitched the inside cover, just a plain piece of fabric, right sides together to the cover then folded it out to hide the seams. Here I have folded out one side only so far.

The completed cover with both sides folded out. You can see the inside edge of the inside cover is folded under for neatness.

I pinned the excess fabric from the stack of connected pages between the front and inside covers then stitched it all together. I tried to get the inside cover edge as close as I could to the first page, Leaving just a small gap of the spine showing.

Next I pinned the back excess fabric strip into the pocket between the back cover and inside cover. I stitched that together and then book is finished. At the end of the third video I shared the binding method of attaching a cover. Here are a couple of closeups of that binding.

Fabric art journal videos

I have finally made my fabric art journal videos. In the next post I will put a summary of the technique so it will help refresh your memory after you have watched the videos if you wish to tackle this project. To see the videos a bit larger go to my YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCks2IH1v5APqojPnmnDA64Q

Video 1 covers the introduction, preparing pages and joining them together.

Video 2 shows how to attach the pages to the spine and getting ready for the cover.

 

Video 3 shows how to attach the cover. I also show an alternative cover with binding. 

I hope you enjoy my first videos. I learned a lot along the way and will probably do more video in the future, with less errors, ha ha. 

Fun fabric journal pages

These are the final pages for my 2016 art journals. I made so many pages this year that I ended up making two books.

 This page was an experiment using the Prisme paints, inspired by the Workshop on the web lesson I did last year. It is very shiny so it hasn't photographed well. I used a stencil design and painted it with Prisme. When it was fully dry (about 2 weeks) I glued it to felt and used it to make this page. I have also added a couple of left over pieces of the forest floor page I showed in the previous post.

This is another of the Workshop on the web lessons. It is done on canvas and is a mixed media experiment. It is currently my calendar picture for the year so will end up in next years fabric journal. 

This page is a paper collage as inspired by Workshop on the web. I used a lot of paper I had previously printed and stitched it after I glued it to the page.  I added the quote with a permanent marker.

When I used mica spray to change the color of the background the printed surface became sticky so I sprinkled on embossing powder and heat set it. You can see in this closeup how shiny it is.

This is the cover of my second book. It is another one of the workshop on the web lessons and was a very experimental journey, my favorite kind of art. 

My finished books that I will show you how to make next time.

Fabric journal pages

I mentioned that over the Christmas break I did some more journal pages for my fabric books. Today I am sharing some of them.

 This was an old cross stitch wall hanging that I took down but didn't want to throw it away. I put fray stop around the edge of the cross stitch where I wanted to cut it down and left it to dry. I cut the border off that I didn't want and stitched it to a textile background. I added a few of my Prisme experiments and a bit of hand stitching among the gold table runner piece at the bottom. 

 This page is centered around the fabric paper experiment that I shared last year. I stitched it to a larger background and added beads.

I made this page after watching a Quilting Arts video about using tea bags in textile art. I traced some stamp images onto the tea bags and colored them with Neocolor II crayons. I then added machine stitching and a little handwork. 

This page is a 2016 Workshop on the Web lesson by Ro Bruhn. I did my childhood home, my first home with my husband and our current home. I also included some of our cars. I was going to add figures of the families but I did the houses too small and the people would have been too tiny to see.

This page is using the forest floor technique I shared last year. I added a few beads and a little hand stitching for veins in the leaves. I found a quote that fit nicely around the outside. It hasn't photographed well but you get the idea.

I have a few more pages to share and soon the video of how to put the book together. I have finished the filming but there is a lot of editing to do. I have no idea how long that will take but I expect it will be within a couple of weeks.