Fancy a cuppa week - Jo Firth Young

Hi, 
You are in for a treat today with a fantastic step-by-step by Jo Firth Young made for you. LOOOTS of pictures, close shots for you to see how she made her adorable project. 
Hope you will take the time to tell her what you think in a comment below. Can't wait to read ...

JOFY used the Fabric book, which we don't have in stock at the moment. You can still order it, but please bear in mind that there will be a delay in dispatching this to you. 

The other option is the burlap one, which would be fantastic for vintagy or masculine  projects ;-)

 I loved this fabric book as soon as I saw it.  The heavyweight calico that it is made from means it is strong enough to be painted sewn & generally altered.

 The first thing I did was to create ‘pockets’ out of a page by folding it down and pressing the fold.

I then masked it off 

   

I used Cut&Dry foam to add Fresco Finish paints through the stencil (Mermaid Fresco Finish).

 

I used my sewing machine to sew around the folded pocket and around the entire page to secure the pocket and further embellish the page.  The felt die cut heart is hand sewn onto the page.

To decorate the pages of the book I die cut cups from fabric.  

I find that fabric die cuts more successfully if it is backed with a supporting element (thin paper for example) – in this case I created a ‘sandwich’ of cotton+iron-on-interfacing+Bondaweb.  I find this combination works really well: the iron-on-interfacing strengthens the fabric ready for cutting, while the Bondaweb is a product used to glue fabrics together.  

I used it here to ‘bond’/glue the fabric to the book page ready for sewing or doodling.  (glue sticks can be used for this also.).  The other advantage to die cutting all these layers together is that it ensures there are no scrappy edges.

I haven’t decorated all the pages of my book – I decorated half of them spread throughout so that it’s a theme running through but leaving space to add detail, journaling and/or scrapbook elements as the book develops.

I used my sewing machine to add detail to the cup on the front cover of my book.  

This resulted in the sewing being visible on the next page.  I liked how it looked - like a line drawing of a cup but decided to give it a wash of colour.

On another page I die cut and attached 2 small cups.  I wanted one of the cups to be facing the other way so I die cut one of the handles by placing the die on the reverse of the fabric sandwich.  I created the ‘sewn’ line by sketching onto the fabric cup with a permanent ink felt tip pen.  The words were added in the same way.

 The sketching on the above cup was also created by sketching.

So that is my ‘cuppa’ book – lots of space for adding text, sketches and stamped images of cups, and tea & coffee related phrases.

Materials:

Fabric Book

Spellbinders Nested cups

Fabric packs

Fresco Finish paints ‘Mermaid’ with a touch of ‘South Pacific’.

Crafters Workshop  Stencils: Circle explosion or Circle grid

See you tomorrow