more sketchbook project progressmore sketchbook project progress

I started to feel a little worried that the pages of the sketchbook were not going to hold up very long under a lot of handling.  My first thought was to use heavier paper but that didn’t feel right.  The rules say you can do that but I felt like that would be a waste of paper and I really wanted to use the original paper that the sketchbook came with.   I considered just gluing the pages together to add strength but that didn’t feel right either.  Then I thought,why not reinforce the pages with fabric?  But what fabric to use? And then I came across this set of 9″squares that I bought last year…

These are crackle hand dyes from South Africa.  They all have very nice crackle patterns across the surface and I figured they’d work nicely with the lines and grids theme of the book.  So I added a layer of Mistyfuse to each piece and then fuse them to each page letting the excess hang off the edge.  Then I turned the excess to the other side and fused it down.  That worked great but I wasn’t that happy with how the reverse sides of the pages looked when they were nested together…

So I decided to actually sew the pages together with the sides with all the white space facing:

side 1

side 2

I am much happier with the way this looks and I really like the stitching around the edges of each page.  Here’s what all the pages look like stacked up:

and here’s a look at a few more of the pages I’ve embellished: