It is over a year since The Sisterhood of the Travelling Sketchbook began it’s travels. The journey started in Australia with Anne Lawson who had the idea of a sketchbook that traveled around the world. She made a hand-bound sketchbook from a variety of artist papers with a few of her own sketches in amongst the papers. Anne worked out a route around the contributors and sent the sketchbook on it’s travels…

First stop was up in Queensland with Kate from Tall Tales from Chiconia  who stitched a beautiful feather using foundation paper piecing, isn’t her writing gorgeous too!

Sandra aka Lady Red Specs from  Please Pass the Recipe drew a great picture of aubergines to go with her recipe for ratatouille.

Chas Spain lives in Melbourne and she drew an amazing pictorial map of a cycle route into Melbourne, in the sketchbook it unfolds like a secret letter! I think the roundels which illustrate the route are stunning.

Sandi, who lives in Wandin East, wrote one of her poems in the sketchbook, I love the imagery in this poem.

The Sketchbook then left Australia and flew on to America where it visited;

Alys from Gardening Nirvana made a sisterhood quilt from all the entries so far, it makes a lovely record of the journey at the halfway point.

Sue at From The Magpie Nest stitched two lovely patchwork pictures all embellished with wonderful beads and charms together with lots of embroidery.

Usha from Creative Crafts DIY created an eclectic patchwork of images using lots of creative techniques.

After Usha, the sketchbook travelled across the Atlantic to Europe, first stop was Greece;

Marina, of Athens Letters , wanted to create something to reflect Greek history, she drew a fascinating picture showing Poseidon and the Goddess Athena.

From Greece the sketchbook travelled over to France to visit Tialys. Tialys does some amazing sketches with her sewing machine, I love her style and the picture of the five ladies with the world behind them captures the spirit of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Sketchbook.

Constanze from Textile Dreamer is in Germany, her embroidery reflects beautifully the winter scenes when the sketchbook was with her.

From Germany the sketchbook finally arrived in Britain, in Wales to be precise, with Jan who blogs at The Snail of Happiness

Jan crocheted some gorgeous mandalas from local Welsh wool. I love the words she wrote around it, in case you’re getting a crick in your neck trying to read it on the computer, this is what she wrote;

Encircling the earth: The skill of hands, the love in our hearts. Brought together by our creativity and kindness, although we are separated by hundreds of miles…our shared passions bind us together. One sisterhood, representing one world, united in love.

I finally completed my entry, an embroidery of Catbells with nine inchies representing my favourite walk up Catbells in the Lake District. I found a green page which set of the inchies beautifully. I wondered about writing more to explain the images, but in the end I decided to keep it fairly simple with a brief discription of the walk using a silver gel pen.

Tomorrow I will post the Travelling Sketchbook for the final leg of it’s travels. It’s flying back to Australia to Trish who blogs at Sounds Like Wish

Being a part of this project has been an amazing experience, it’s great how creativity has brought us all together with such a wide variety of skills, artists, poets, quilters, embroiderers. Thanks to Anne for organising The Sisterhood of the Travelling Sketchbook.