Art and Sole: patchwork

A couple of weeks ago I saw a tweet by Roben Marie Smith, I followed her link and discovered THIS BLOG POST if you haven't already seen it then do go take a look. All the details are there and there is a link to the FB group too.

Basically over 2014 Roben and 4 other artists will be issuing weekly prompts that will encourage and inspire you to create, decorate and fill in your journal/planner/diary.... whatever you choose to use.

I was so excited to read the post, not because I had been looking for something like this, but because I had literally just finished making a journal cover, but I had no idea what I would use the journal for... it was fate!!!

So I decided to join in, and that meant adding even more to my journal... I wanted to show you how my journal looks now, right at the beginning of the year.

I started by making a whole load of patchwork pieces, you can see how I did them in THIS POST..for these particular pieces I used markers, but you can do this technique with paints too.

I did some patchwork pieces a while back and used paints on them, see how I did them in THIS POST . So it is up to you how you colour them, markers, watercolours,acrylic...

so once I had my patchwork pieces I needed to fix them to a backing paper. I measured my paper out by wrapping it around my journal, with enough length to fold over to the inside covers.

Then i dabbed glue stick on each patch, and stuck them to the backing paper, making sure to overlap them.

Then I used my sewing machine to zig zag between all the pieces, to fasten them down.

Make sure you use a pretty coloured thread that matches in with your patchwork pieces..

then turn the whole thing over and glue on some lining paper, this will hide all the back of the stitching. I just used black wrapping paper.

next, stitch all around the outside edge then fold in the 2 short ends and stitch those into place. You now have 2 end 'pockets'. Slip the front and back covers of the journal into the pockets.

Here is how it looks now..

I love how the colours look together..

Here is how the inside looks, it has become very fat over the festive period. I expect it to get even bigger over the year. Hopefully I will be able to keep up with the prompts and totally fill my book, if I do then I will show another flip through video at the end of the year.

All the page edges have been covered in washi tape.