…linen House Of Thoughts hand bound art book…

Every now and then, one of us in our quilt camp group will get a burst of organisational energy, and declutter our craft rooms, and arrive at camp fully laden with goodies to pass on. Such was the case in 2016, when Kylie brought a whole box of stuff for us to go through. I scored a set of gelatos, and a pack of project life pages, and right at the side, was a sewing kit, for making cushions. The fabric tickled my creative bone (for those who haven’t recently brushed up on Anatomy Of A Crafter, it’s located right next to the funny bone), but I also didn’t need any cushions, and it wasn’t a huge amount of fabric to make anything else.

Our conversation then circled around to a friend of Kylie’s, and how she would enjoy art journaling and get a lot of it. Then someone who wasn’t me (but is always behind my crazy crafty escapades), started raving about a book I had bound for her that she was using as an art journal, and mentioned that I should make the friend in question one of her own…and that opened the ideas floodgates, and it seemed obvious what that fabric should be used for. So into my bag it went, and came home with me with the intention of creating a beautiful boo out of it. I got the covers sewn and set. The pages bundled into signatures and folded…and then a crazy little adventure called Diamond Club happened in my doTERRA business, and all my crafty endeavours had to hit the pause button.

I took it to camp last year with the intention of binding it…and guess which genius forgot to take binding tools, such as awls, clips, needles, you know, all the things to actually put it together. Because of course I did.

But camp this year is looming, so I nominated the poor, languishing, unfinished book as my WIP project for the recent long weekend challenge. Whilst I didn’t get it finished, it was the perfect kickstart I needed to get moving on it, and late last week, I tied the final knot in the binding, and now just need to attach the end papers to consider it done.

Today, I’m continuing to potter along on my camp gifts, after a shortened school morning thanks to having woken with almost zero voice. I’ve managed to get some snail mail out the door, and a few chores done. Tonight I’m planning on starting my next book club book, and finishing the current colour of my crochet blanket so I can tie it off and pack it read for camp NEXT WEEK. Goodness there’s a lot to do between now and then…wish me luck!