There does seem to be a few Sketchbooks featuring here at the moment, there’s the international one organised by Anne Lawson in Australia, it’s called The Sisterhood of the Travelling Sketchbook, there’s about 14 of us contributing to it, all sorts of different things, paintings, poems, quilting, textile art…I think it’s in France at the moment, there’s another three to contribute before it’s my turn. I’m the penultimate contributor, so I get to see nearly everyone else’s art work in person. There is a website showing all  the pages so far, so have a look what everyone else has been doing.

My embroiderers Guild have organised a Travelling Sketchbook withing the Guild, six of us in each group. We had to choose a theme and everyone will do something loosely based on it. My theme is mountains, we know in advance what everyone elses themes are so we can start thinking in advance. We’ll have each book for a month before we pass it on to the next. This is my sketchbook above and there’s a post about my first embroidery for it yesterday.

We’ve also had a couple of talks at Embroiderers Guild about the usefulness of having your own sketchbook, for writing down ideas, inspirations, trying out different techniques. I decided to buy an extra sketchbook to have a go. One thing that has always put me off before is that I’ve got ideas bubbling round my head which have been there for months, if not years. They get modified every so often! I didn’t see how you would avoid having ideas for the same project in several different parts of the book, which wouldn’t be helpful. I’ve been assured however, that with these books the paper is heavy enough to carefully cut behind the spiral binding, remove the page and pop it back in somewhere else.

Of course I needed to make my sketchbook pretty 🙂

Whilst looking for something else I found a flower embroidery I had stitched at the Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate back in 2014. Rowandean always have an activity table where you can just sit and embroider a small design for about £5, it’s like a little oasis in the hustle and bustle of the show! I thought it would look rather pretty on the front of my book. I found two co-ordinating batik fabric in my stash which complemented the embroidery. I didn’t have much of either, in fact the geometric batik was a 10″ square from a layer cake. I thought there was just enough with a bit of fudging!

I edged the embroidery with the feather batik, the purple left side is actually from the same piece, just a more purple area! I then stitched a strip of the geometric fabric to go around the spiral binding. I had enough of the feather fabric to do the back of the book too.

I found a length of green batik to line it with. I only had enough feather fabric left for one pocket, I didn’t actually have enough left of the geometric one to make a double sided pocket either,so it’s green lining on the inside of that one!

I used fusible fleece on the back of the main fabric and then stitched it all together. I edged stitched round to give a firm edge and my sketchbook is finished, looking very pretty 🙂

I’m linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, a celebration of all things stitched by hand, why not have a look what everyone else has been creating.