Star Books

Fully Opened Star Book 

I teach classes for the Embroiderers' Guild of America and consequently am always devising new ones. This new teaching project combines a star book with embroidered covers. I call it the Stitched Star.

It takes approximately five hours to make a plain star book with no frills and a plain cover. Each star has fourteen page pockets in it to hold small photos, poems, keepsakes, etc. This means taking about eighteen sheets of cardstock, cutting them to the correct size, folding, pasting and stitching up the binding.

What takes the time is the decoration of the binding--in this case beads, the decoration of the covers--perforated paper stitched with Impressions and Laura Perin threads, and the decoration of the innermost layer, the pockets. In these photos the inner layer is missing. I am just finishing those up and will photograph them and upload the photos in a day or two.

A double page with pockets

The back cover, an embroidery with perforated paper

The front cover of embroidered perforate paper

Saturday Night

Virginia Woolf was right.  A space of my own is what I needed all this time.  Mine is a small house, called a casita here in ABQ.  I have only recently moved into it, though we have owned this property for several years.  It is my own and I don't have to share it with anyone.  Anyone else in the casita is my guest.  Even Cosmo, the cat.

I have had sewing rooms in our various houses as we made our various moves from place to place.  But those spaces were always part of other people's spaces.  The kids', the husband's, even the cats'.

In the book Sacred Spaces, the author said that a personal space, a space sacred to the person, should satisfy all the senses.  I love it that mine does.