Sew and sew and so on

I've been hanging 0nto a dozen or so "girly" fat book pages from friends, as well as some I made, knowing that I wanted to bind them into one book. I was going to use my Zutter binder, but then I decided to cover the covers with fabric. So I just used two rings to hold it all together.

My beginner sewing attempts with my tiny machine continue: I tried to make a patchwork, quilted cover out of fabric scraps, a chenille heart, buttons, a puffed applique and some embroidered roses cut from a vintage hankie.

The end result isn't too bad, but I know I spent more than eight hours on it yesterday, whereas an experienced sewer (sewist?) would have had two four-inch by four-inch squares covered in less than 30 minutes. And, the eight hours were even easy! But they were fun. Well, sort of. Except for all the times I broke my needle, broke my thread, sewed crooked, jammed the bobbin case...pretty much everything an inexperienced sewer would do. But it's a good way to learn.

And now I have a darling book. The back of the Little Red Riding Hood page and the Starry Night page are both by Malin of Sweden. I just adore style, and thanks to her I found the Suzi Blu group. The Barbie page is from Bryanna of The Canary's Cupcake, a fellow enthusiast of all things girly--like Alice in Wonderland, Marie Antoinette, Blythe and Barbie.

The next-to-last page shows the inside front cover with a pocket for Moo cards and the facing page is by me. And the last picture shows the closed book, nice and fat. Thanks to everyone who swapped a page or pages with me.