Slow progress this weekend …

caused by a combination of the after-effects of insomnia – and Wensleydale re-arranging my room so that he could get to the window, to replace the old curtains with a much more practical roller blind. My room being in the state it is, this involved quite a lot of rearranging – but as a result I no longer have window coverings which dangle in the paint.

This meant that yesterday I couldn’t get at my machine to finish off the last drawer lining – and as the blind-erecting turned into an overnight job [as in, ‘Oh, b****r, I've put it up back to front, let’s have a drink and I’ll start again tomorrow’] – I made a sketch book.

I had already made some layered backgrounds, as suggested in Gwen Hedley’s new book, so I used those for some of the pages. My covers seem to get more vestigial as I go on – in this case I just took off the address label, removed half of the internal flap and stapled the other half to make a pocket, ‘ strengthened’  [maybe] the spine and added the pages. As I’ve got a bit bored with using elastic to try to hold my sketchbooks shut – this one has a rather glitzy red ribbon.

The rather odd internal stitch patterns are one of Keith smith’s 3 section sewings, which he calls Beethoven’s Fifth – I think because it makes zigzags on the spine, which I forgot to photograph.

I had to cut down the paper to make the pages fit the mailer – which meant I had some left-overs. So what can you do with left-over paper?

Make a book of course. This is a rather more elaborate cover, made from a scrap of the drawer linings – but a much less elaborate binding.

 

 

Today, when I could access the sewing machine again, I finished the last drawer – the rubber band drawer.I hope you can see the specially made dust bunnies.

The whole piece isn’t quite finished. I am still pottering around with the contents of the string drawer – I know it needs something more but I can’t work out what.

Then I decided I’d better tackle the paperwork – or ‘gathering together all the widely distributed stitch samples and putting them in the workbook’ work.

The problem with putting 3D samples in a work book is that they are 3D. I can make a workbook lumpy with 2D samples, so you can imagine what this one looks like.

But just in case you can’t, here are pictures.

That’s a rejected string sample trying, but failing, to keep it all under control. Now I need to add some words of explanation [‘I’m nuts’?] and the all-important evaluation, decide on what I’m going to do with the string drawer, do it - and it’s all finished. [I am feeling a bit pressurised because I can’t make the hand–in session and I have promised to get the 3D piece and my essay in early. Fool.]

Then I used the last of the left-over paper to make another book. Really vestigial, this one, as I experimented with staples to hold the pages in.

Unfortunately they have failed, so I will have to stitch it after all…

No wonder I feel knackered.

 

As does someone else, after a hard day – er - sleeping.

‘Cats sleep anywhere’.