I decided to try another book cover with the Italian insertion stitch binding. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry this morning and forgot to fold over the edges of the binding so I just decided to try it without the folded edge. It actually works fine except now I’m not sure how I will attach pages inside. But I’ll work something out.

Do you ever think that after learning a new stitch, “that was easy, I’ll remember that one”? That was what I thought about Italian insertion stitch but the beginning still looks crappy. Once I got started, it was fine except for a little tension issue where I kept pulling a little tighter and tighter but that’s not really noticeable once it is off the card. But I still always need to look back at instructions to remember how to start a stitch that I haven’t done for a while or that is relatively new to me.

Here’s a closer view once I got going. You can see to the left that the stitches are getting pulled a little tighter because the space between the pages is getting smaller. I just have to remember this next time I do this stitch, that would be good if I had much of a memory left!

I ordered The Complete Yurt Handbook by Paul King and it came today. I’ve only read a couple of chapters but it has tons of useful information in it. The first section of the book is about the history of yurts or ger and the different types. The second section is complete instructions on making one. So this book will come in really handy over the summer when we build our yurt.

Each of the chapters starts off with a poem about yurts. Here is one of the shorter ones:

I’m still adding stitching to the machine applique piece. I added more burnt orange and dark purple. It looks a little better but still not as I had envisioned it.

Perhaps I need to add some cable stitch to give a thicker line? What do you think?

Today, I spent most of the day working on a slide show presentation for a class I will be teaching in June. It is a beginning felting class that will be held at Flathead Valley Community College. I will let you know more as the details are available. I did get in a little more stitching on my cut back applique. I think I will end up with the entire piece covered by stitching. I did add some Stitch-N-Tear to the back to give it a bit more support for all that stitching.

 Here’s the entire piece. I added a burnt orange thread today.

Can you see it in there?

I didn’t have much time today due to errands and running around, plus we have a birthday dinner this evening for a friend. So I just got a few lines stitched on my applique piece. And it still is very unimpressive.

This photo is much more true to the color of the piece though. It certainly needs a lot more stitching to integrate those shapes together.