Bookwraps

Like a number of other people in the Contemporary Quilt group, I am making bookwraps for the tombola at next year's Festival of Quilts.  I have made quite a few book covers in the past but I began this project by thinking that it would be good to have something I could make by hand while I was on holiday.  So I put together two small collages that could be Kanta stitched and took them to Italy.  Of course I had no time to work on them then but I have now finished them.  They are both supposed to be A6 size which is about as small as you can go.  The first one is fine.

However, I have a problem with the second one.  I decided to give it a binding rather than satin-stitching it, and lo and behold when I had finished it I could not fit the book in it because of where the seams are!

A pity as it looks quite nice otherwise.  I will have to see if I can find anything really tiny to go in it.  As everything I make will have to be posted I am generally not planning to include books in mine because of the postage.

I am now a bit bored with Kanta stitching so, like Margaret Ramsay http://magsramsay.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/more-bookwraps.htm lI have dug out various leftovers from previous projects and propose to use them as the basis of the next few.  Like most quilters I was taught early on never to throw anything away but there comes a point at which stuff needs to be used.  So far I have found:

Some pieces of dyed and/or printed fabric.  Most of these will have to have strips added to them.

Two pieces I made when teaching myself to use a soldering iron.

I had a nice time stitching these and added beads to the second one.  I fear they may be a bit too 'raised' for book covers but I will see.  Then I found a plastic envelope with  left over embellishments.

Some of these were made on workshops I did with Jenny Rolfe http://www.contemporaryexpressions.co.uk/jenny-rolfe-biography.html who also taught me to make book covers.  There is more than one way of doing book covers and I intend to use both Jenny's method and the method being promoted for the tombola project.  http:http://bookwrapgems.wordpress.com/

I know I have various other leftovers: blocks, a couple of Mola blocks that did not work etc. etc. so I have plenty to keep me going.