I finished the edging of the machine stitched page I was working on yesterday. Then because I didn’t have another hand stitch project going, I decide to do detached buttonhole in blue on top of the orange edge. I used thin blue thread and so the stitching is tiny.

Here’s what happens when you just can’t leave well enough alone. Just add a little blanket stitch to the edge of your machine stitched pages.

 It only takes a few minutes!

And then you have a bright pop of orange on the edge. Perhaps I should do some further embellishment of the edge?

I worked on the third page for my machine stitched book. The instructions for this one was to have areas with minimal stitching, areas with moderate stitching and then small areas with very dense stitching.

 Here is the ‘sandwich’ that started the process. I used white nylon organza fused to the back of felt. The felt had been previously painted with Dye-na-Flow paint and the top layer is dyed silk organza. The layers are basted together.

 Next, I followed the organic lines that were formed in the dyeing of the silk organza and free motion stitched the layers together. I cut back some of the areas of silk organza to leave painted felt.

 Then I added stitching. I haven’t finished the edges yet because I’m trying to decide if I should add a touch of yellow. I don’t want to over stitch the piece and I should have added yellow earlier to integrate it in. I might just leave it as is.

There is a lot of surface texture since the dense stitching really compresses the felt so the more lightly stitched areas puff up a bit. Now I have to decide what I am going to do for the remaining two pages. My choice, hmmmm……

Today I started working on my machine stitched book that I am making for homework for my last Level 2 Stitch Class. I finished two pages. The book needs to be 5 pages long so I have three more pages to make and then the binding. I also added a bit more dark red to my painting from yesterday.

 Here is the first book page. It is a combination of automatic machine stitches worked in patterns. These pages take a long time due to all the starting and stopping.

Here is the leaf painting again. I added another coat of red to the background. It is slightly darker than the photo shows. It is so hard taking a photo of red. The camera doesn’t seem to know where to focus. I also made a short video of my bead book. I am going to try and edit the video and post it on the Felting and Fiber Studio site tomorrow. Hopefully that won’t be too painful!