Month: July 2012

As I said at the bottom of this post, I wasn’t happy with the sketchbook cover I submitted for the CNCH Return of the Return to Sender. Then it won a ribbon. Darn. Now what do I do? Do I mess about with a ribboned item?

After a month of looking at it and thinking about it, I realized that ribbon or not, I wasn’t going to be happy with it in its current state. Therefore, the likelihood of me using it was close to nil.

What was wrong with it? The fabric moved around too much which meant the sketchbook would move around while I sketch in it.

Yesterday, I picked out the hem stitches and fused a medium weight interfacing to the back of the woven fabric as well as the inside flap fabric.

I really like the stiffness of the cover now. I don’t feel like the sketchbook is slip sliding around inside the cover now. Unfortunately, the extra bulk makes it very very snug. So snug that I really had to work to put it back on the sketchbook.

I gave the cover a few extra jets of steam with the sketchbook in place and let it rest overnight. The ease feels better this morning. I’ll leave it as it for a few days before I decide whether to swap out the stabilizer to a lighter weight one or not.

My current thinking is, if I like the weight and the stability of the fabric, then it should stay. After all, how often would I be switching out the sketchbook? Once a year? How often will I be holding the sketchbook in my hands? Hopefully, daily.

In the meantime, I have some spindle spun tussah silk threads drying. It will go on the little inkle loom this week and woven into an trim for the sketchbook cover. Does the cover need it? With the new stabilizer, probably not. I’ll decide after the trim is woven and attached if it stays or not.

Stay tuned.