Creative Sketchbooks Part 2

Sorry for the break – Wensleydale and I went to Bournemouth yesterday and got back worn out – all the sea air, you know. Or carrying all the books we bought at Borders and the birthday presents from a shop I won’t name. [Both daughters in law have birthdays in March – all the Cheese women do apart from the new one!]

So – back to Creative Sketchbooks. In the second term we completed a bought sketch book on a theme of our choice – mine was ‘Doors and Windows’.

This is the front of the book – we were encouraged to decorate the covers. The window frame uses a technique from Maggie Grey’s ‘Raising the Surface with Machine Embroidery’ – plastic canvas embroidered with string and covered with tissue paper. The spine is decorated with keys and key fobs made with Scoubidous [or however you spell it!]

The book makers amongst my readers may be cringing at the way I have wrecked this but I love the sight of a work book bursting at the seams – I suspect many textile artisans would agree with me. The wavy line at the bottom is a page added by tying it to the coil. We were encouraged to tear, cut or even burn the pages – it is actually written into the syllabus!




This is the first page – the door mat says ‘Welcome’ -wonkily. The drawing is of a local door – it was the wealth of beautiful architectural features in the city that made me choose this theme. The background was done with a stamp made from polystyrene







This is the door of my sewing room – with some sayings about doors on the left. The background is Koh-i-noor - which I may have mentioned before ...



I meant to do another page about windows but couldn’t produce a drawing I was satisfied with!

This was inspired by the door of our cathedral. It isn’t obvious but there are three pages here, two of which have archways cut into them, the first one larger than the second.

This is only a small selection of pages – it was a 50 page sketchbook. We didn’t have to fill it – but of course I wanted to [anal personality or what?]

Some are not fit to be shown in public, especially when real artists read my blog, but I learned a lot from doing it, and there was a big spin off into my embroidery design, which is what I’d hoped. It is also what got me into making books. I would love to do a real bookbinding course and learn how to make them properly!