Book Cover

I forgot to write about the book cover I finished recently. There was a great article in Quilting Arts magazine about making one, and I needed a small project and wanted to play with some new ideas. That is what started me tea & coffee dyeing.

I laid the strips of fabric into an overlapping grid onto fusible interfacing — and then fused it to stay together. I then stamped on the fabric with metallic paints, covered it with some strips of lace and a bronze polyester organza, and then quilted it with a bronze polyester thread.

Then I got out my embossing tool — which is really designed for scrapbookers but works great for melting manmade fibers like polyester — and proceeded to melt the organza. It doesn’t melt completely but draws up around the stitching.

I scorched it a little in the middle so I covered that area with lace and stitched it down. I love how the organza tightened up around the stitching but was less please with the crispy areas I got where the organza had been without stitching. Next time I will probably cut the organza from the blank areas first.

And thanks to permission from Pokey Bolton, editor of Quilting Arts, I can share the final book cover with you.

I added a lace edge, wrapped it around a book, and tied it with thick cotton drapery cord that I had covered with thread and ribbon. I then added beads and pearls.

Looks old, doesn’t it?