patchwork and photo fabric

I love trying new things, and these days it's often my customers who spark these new adventures. My latest book is one of these fortuitous projects and I'm so excited to share the final product with you!

I received a note from a very lovely woman asking if I might be able to make a book similar to the one that Amanda Soule made for her daughter a while back (also featured in her wonderful book, The Creative Family). The book is made with sweet cotton prints with photos and text printed on fabric and sewn onto each page. Being a big fan of Amanda's and intrigued by the possibilities of printing on fabric (especially after reading about it again in this awesome book) I agreed to make a 10-page book filled with photos of her (very cute) little girl and the people who love her.

Of course, I wanted to give this book my own signature but wasn't quite sure how I would do it at first. It seemed too easy to make a book the way I usually do, with a single background fabric and the photo zig-zagged on. No, I had to do something a bit more interesting.

My customer had told me that she loves Japanese prints and put a few in her Etsy favorites for me to see and get a sense of what she likes. I honed in on one particular print (which ended up being the cover fabric) and decided to use those colors--pink, red, yellow, and white--as the color scheme for the book. I had some fabric that would work and ordered a few pieces to fill it out. I wanted to use some of my vintage calicos in the book, too, because I think they go so well with a lot of Japanese fabric and found that I had a lot in a red-yellow-blue/navy scheme, so I decided to add in some blue, as well. And since I had a lot of different fabric that all looked great together but maybe a bit disconnected by themselves I decided to do some patchwork!

I LOVE the way the patchwork frames look on these photos. I'm also imagining little Muriel picking out all of the little things there are to see in the little bits of fabric. A mushroom here, a house there....

And I put lots of other little embelishments in there too. I couldn't help myself, it was a lot of work, but it was also so much fun! Patchwork is what I started with way back when I was little and I really miss it. I can feel a pieced quilt coming on....

Happy Birthday, Muriel (and her Mama ;)!