the world’s fanciest sticker book

It’s as predictable as the sun coming up. Five minutes after we walk out of dance class, the tears start. The sticker that was on her hand just a moment ago has disappeared. Not a worry, thinks I, we’ll make her a sticker book. A bit of patterned paper or some fabric scraps, some book board and some heavy printer paper and we’ll be done in 20 minutes.

HA. Seems someone is to much like her mama, and if something is worth doing, it’s worth over-crafting, and she decided she needed a mermaid. Then of course, my own over-crafting tendencies took over, and inspired by this pin, we were soon surrounded by satin and organza and taffeta. Butterfly ended up choosing the final combination to pull together the mermaid I had sketched out for her approval. The blue background was a piece of shot silk I bought from the remnant bin many moons ago for silk ribbon embroidery. The purple satin of her tank top is an offcut from the bridesmaids dresses from our wedding. The quilting cotton of her skin is from my mum’s stash. The pink organza and grey taffeta are offcuts from the dress I made Butterfly for her aunty’s wedding a couple of months ago. All these little pieces from various bits of our family’s crafting history coming together to make a special book for a special girl, and it makes me so happy to see it all working together beautifully. (If you are thinking it looks familiar, it probably does – I shared the cover over at Blossom Heart Quilts a couple of weeks back, when I helped Alyce host Sew Cute Tuesday).

The pieces were all machine appliqued in place, before gathering some organza and using a wider zigzag stitch to attach it and form her waistband in one go. I then used some yellow thread to free-hand machine embroider her hair on, free-handed in her eyes and mouth and the background details, and used a scallop style stitch on my machine to add “scales” to her tail. The necklace was made by hand stitching beads (as selected by Butterfly from my “assorted random beads” jar) into place. Once I she was happy with the detail, it was just a matter of fixing it to a scrap bit of book board, and binding with some perle cotton I had in stash left over from a dolls quilt. Butterfly was hovering over my shoulder every step of the way, and it was quite the effort to convince her to put it safely in her dance bag, rather than filling it up straight away with random stickers from home… or worse, attacking it with the textas!

With one little girl happy with her book, it’s onto the next project – some letterpressing notecards to bundle up, a new couple of plates to design and send to production, and a cute little puppet for Beetle are on the agenda today, as well as some sewing to finish up the table runner I shared yesterday. I think there is also some dance costume sewing to be slotted in there somewhere, and some invitations for a birthday that I’m in denial about need assembling. How’s your Thursday looking?