I've found it!

You may remember that when I finished the box I said I couldn’t find the second leaf spray I had made to put inside it. This afternoon, when I was looking for something else – I found it. Sewing it into a completed box was harder than sewing it to the base alone would have been – but it is done.

Of course I didn’t find the silk paper I was really looking for …

I have been silent for a few days because on Saturday my computer died. Cheese Major [the techie] came round to leave us his keys for a bit of reverse cat sitting. He printed off the details of his next car [!] and went home to pack, because he and Mrs Cheese Major were going on holiday.

After he left the computer froze, and when I turned it off and turned it on again, as recommended by all the best techies – it wouldn’t boot up.

But the person who usually mends my computer [and who had broken it this time!] was on holiday. So – it turned out - was his substitute, his old mate Baz.

I suppose I could have waited till one or other of them came home but I was beginning to get withdrawal symptoms. So I had to pay someone to repair it. A corrupted something apparently. It seems to be OK now.

So what did I do while I was cut off from the world? Made some books of course, inspired by a couple of articles in an old issue of ‘Fibre and Stitch’. The blue one is made of Evolon, which is one of the many things I had bought and then couldn’t remember what I had bought it for. It is coloured with disperse dye. I tried using a feather as a mask for the front but didn’t like the contrast of the stark white against the blue. However the dye had discharged less where the feather had been than in the background so when I transferred it again I got a darker feather shape against a paler background.

The spine is made of sequin waste. The pages are held together with hinges of Indian paper but I think this would make a very good cover for a book on a concertina hinge.

The green one has a multilayer cover – brown paper, Markal paintsticks and glitter paint, painted Bondaweb, skeleton leaves, snippets of fabric and thread and a final layer of organza. I made it bigger than the instructions suggested as I couldn’t bear to cut the covers smaller.

But by then I had made the pages for a smaller book so the little one is a quick version made with more Indian paper.

And finally – a quick make for Babybel’s nursery. I spotted this panel in Hobbycraft and had to have it. Babybel already has a quilt and a cushion made with this range of fabrics, but as her co-grandparents have a Border collie [Skye, a.k.a. Ronaldo] I thought her mum needed another cushion to rest her back against.

It is nothing fancy, although in the spirit of C&G I did put some decoration on the back. Made it difficult to know where to put the buttons though!

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a panel with a cocker spaniel on it, so Babybel’s own dog may sulk …