Sketchbook update

This time around I have a page and a half to show you. I finally finished the back side of the very first page I stitched:

brown quilt

Since I have a lot of crafts with near-term deadlines, I didn’t do any hand embroidery this round. There will be plenty more of that, but I wanted to get something completed without spending several days on it. Hence, more machine embroidery. This time I colored the page before doing the stitching, and made the page pastel and the stitching black, like scratch-off coloring pages that are black over colors. I also switched from regular zigzag to a special diamond-shaped zigzag.

black diamonds

That was actually the underside while I was stitching. You can tell the kind of thread I had in the needle: copper metallic. Metallic thread is hateful stuff, but I am continually drawn to it despite that. Here’s the upper side:

copper and leaves

I worked it out and if the cover is included, I have to do a page a week from now on to finish the book on time. I’m not going to do exactly that; I’ll leave more for Thanksgiving and winter breaks. However, it was a boot to the rear to see those numbers! Starting in late November you can expect sketchbook updates to come slightly more than monthly.

Sketchbook update

Oh boy. Unless I pick it up, this is not going to be done by the deadline. Anyway, I have scheduled myself monthly update posts, so as to give me intermediate deadlines to have something new done.

I did a little more than what I’m about to show you, but did not complete any other pages. The one I finished, front and back, was the first page of the book:

recto

verso

I should be getting my sewing machine back from the shop tomorrow, so I’ll have it to try out per melydia’s suggestion.