Making a fabric book

I have become interested in making a fabric book. That is a book where the pages are fabric instead of paper, and they are decorated with dye, slow stitching, embroidery of all sorts, fabric paints, drawings, etc. The sky is the limit. They seem to be quite popular in the stitching community at the moment.

For a theme, my book will be 'favorites from the garden' and will be a compilation of favorite quotes, and observations from my garden: birds, flowers, and all things nature. I just finished my first page last night.

I don't know where this page will fall in the book; I do not yet know how many pages I will make and in what order they will ultimately end up. I'm working very impromptu and informally on this project. I want it to be full of of joy.

My first page began as a piece of white cotton fabric on which I made a cyanotype print using bits of flowers and grasses from the garden. It's the first time I ever make a cyanotype print. I made the print earlier this summer with the intention of using it [in some way] in my book.

I purchased the two cyanotype chemicals (ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide) online, pre-diluted to the correct levels so that they can be easily mixed 50/50. I should have taken notes on my process because now I can't remember if I mordanted the fabric before making the print! Oh dear. (To be fair, I did not know I'd be blogging about it.) I'm pretty sure I didn't because I had to order some aluminum acetate and the package has not yet been opened. A pretty good indicator I think. Aluminum acetate is a mordant for cellulose fibers; when preparing wool (a protein fiber) we use aluminum sulfate (aka Alum).

So quite likely I ran my first experiment without a mordant. The process for making a print starts by painting the fabric with a mixture of the 2 above mentioned chemicals. This needs to be done in a darkened room. I found that my upstairs bathroom makes an excellent darkroom since it has no windows. The fabric then needs to dry 24 hours. The following day, I foraged for some foliage and flowers to use for my print. The dried fabric was placed on a flat board, the bits of nature arranged on top of the fabric, and a sheet of glass placed over all to keep everything in place. I used clothes pins around the edge to secure the layers. All this done in my 'dark room'. This preparation was then brought outside and placed facing direct sunlight. I exposed the fabric for about 15 minutes, maybe a bit longer. The print was then brought back inside, dismantled, and the fabric rinsed well in tap water several times over. The image develops over the several minutes and hours, but when in a hurry, a splash of hydrogen peroxide in the rinse water will act as a catalyst and produce quicker results.

My print came out quite satisfactorily and I was well pleased.

I wasn't sure how I would use the print, and that came to me only recently. There is a poem/prayer in an old book I purchased at a thrift shop this summer. The book is entitled "Riley Songs O'Cheer" by James Whitcomb Riley (c) 1905. It's a beautiful book of poems and illustrations which ends with "The Prayer Perfect". It's a lovely poem and I decided to embroider it over my print, but since it is too long for one page, I will need to use two pages. The second half of the poem/prayer was worked over this cyanotype. I will work the first half of the poem/prayer on the previous facing page, when I get that page designed.

To get the letters on the page for embroidering, I used a product called "Transfer Eze", purchased from my local quilt shop; 8.5" x 11" sheets that can go in the printer. When printed, the backing is peeled off and the sheet adhered to the work. When the embroidery is finished, the sheet is removed by dissolving in water. It's weird and cool. Under the water the sheet turns to a gel which dissolves, leaving just the embroidery.

The completed page: