I’ve been concentrating on my cross-stitch words book over the last couple of weeks, I felt ready to get it finished! I’m making it using the tab and slot method which is a way of putting together a book by slotting the pages together. The only instructions I’ve found are for twenty pages, it’s quite a complex (but simple!!) way of constructing a book so for my first attempt I wouldn’t like to deviate from the instructions, so twenty pages it is!

The pages include the front and back cover, so that takes up four pages. With the four Sew Together pieces and the Little Sheep Virtues I had eleven all together. I have patterns for another two sheep but I really didn’t fancy doing another one. Instead I’ve chosen five of the sheep virtues and found a quote that goes with it.

I’ve used two French ones which I’ve kept for years, though I had to check the spelling, I’ve hopefully got them right. I would roughly translate them as ‘Everything is possible with hope’ and ‘True friendship is like the sea, it comes in and it goes out, but it’s always there’.

I’ve just used my usual back-stitch font in a fine green variegated perle thread which I think works very well. I decided to live dangerously and not plan them out first on graph paper, I just started to stitched them as I would write them, luckily they all worked out! All the quotes are mounted on a rectangle in the same fabric as the matching sheep.

I used fabrics from my stash to make the surrounds for all the pages. I’ve trimmed them to 8″ as I want my finished page to be 7.5″. Initially I was planning to just leave them plain but I decided they were a bit too plain so I’ve done a double running stitch line along two sides of each piece and added three buttons to the opposite corner.

I’ve just two pages to add running stitch and buttons to, otherwise all sixteen pages are complete…

I’ve just got the front and back to make now and then I can start putting it together…and that’s when I need to start concentrating!