I started working on binding the bead book today. I completed all the edges and hopefully they are even enough.

 Here’s the back with the fused organza and the edge marked ready to stitch.

 Here are all the pages with their stitching.

It has been really slow at the store for the last few days so I got quite a bit of stitching completed. I’m working on my applique samples since I still haven’t gotten the backs on my bead book pages. I did get a few of those fused down this morning and I plan on fusing the rest tonight. Then I can start on binding the edges.

 I finished the stitching on the cover for my applique book. I am undecided on whether I will add anything else to this or not. I don’t like that the cut pieces have the shape of a face. I didn’t see that when I first cut it out but now that someone mentioned it, I can’t unsee the face. I’m not sure what I can do to change it at this point though.

Here is the second applique piece I started stitching today. If you’ve been following along, this is the piece that I designed by playing with black and white shapes in this post. I used wool felt that Jan gave me – Thanks Jan! Normally we are to use our own hand dyed felt for homework so hopefully this will be OK even though it is commercial felt. I thought since it was such a traditional type of design that the commercial felt looked good. Plus I really liked the colors and the heathery appearance. I guess I’ll find out when I go back in February. Thanks for stopping by!

I’ve managed to blog for 14 days in a row and have gotten quite a bit done in the first two weeks of January. Today I worked on stitch class homework (what else do I do?). We are to choose a folk art design and make an applique sample in that style. I have chosen the Kyrgyzstan culture and the shyrdak rug designs in felt.

 I am interested in these rugs/designs as these are the types of rugs that were used in traditional yurts.

 They are made with bright colors and intricate cut designs and I thought they would work well for applique.

 The plan at the moment is to use hand made felt to make the applique. I already have some prefelts that I thought I could use. I have to check and see what color they are.

 I actually like the ones that are made with natural colored wool the best but I think I’ll use brighter colors for my design.

 Here is a cut out I made of the planned design. This may be a bit tough to cut out in felt. I didn’t glue this in my notebook yet as I thought the colors were a bit much. I made add a bit of paint to make them more like the colors used in the photos above.

I also did some stitching for the cover of my applique book. You can see that the bottom piece has been stitched and the top piece still needs to be done.

I finally finished the final edge on the bead book. Such a relief. That fringe takes a long time.

Here’s the finished page. It’s a bit over the top.

Here’s a closer view of the fringe.

 This is all the pages stacked together. Now I have to bind them. This is a bit daunting as I think if will be difficult to hold together. In the past with this type of binding I’ve used large safety pins to hold the pages in place. My safety pins are not this big!

 You can see how the edges get progressively longer.

 It took about 120 yards of thread to sew all these beads on. The book is going to be really heavy.

 But at least it is finished.

And I’m happy with it even though it isn’t something I would have done on my own, I enjoyed the process. Next step is backing each page and beginning the binding.

This is one of those days that I don’t have much time to do anything creative. I have to go set up and volunteer for a fundraiser today, plus do laundry and go to the grocery. So I just have time for a little bit of work on my bead book. The back of each page will be covered by a piece of painted organza that will be fused down. The organza really doesn’t cover the stitches very well. Since I used brown thread, it shows against the back quite a bit. So this is my solution.

I’m doing a little coloring today. Hopefully more will be happening tomorrow!