Leather Blank Books with Crochet Pouches

I made two leather journals with crochet pouches as Christmas gifts this year. 

Making the journals probably took less time than making the pouches which each took over 6 hours to crochet.  I have no pattern for the pouches or the journals, I just made it up as I went.  Each journal is 5" x 7" with around 200 pages of blank paper.  The journals are bound with a combination long and link stitch that I just learned.  I actually made the journals twice, totally ripped out everything I'd done, and trimmed all the pages by 1/4" because I didn't like how the pages were showing beyond the edge of the leather covers. But that means I got twice as much practice doing this binding than I would have otherwise!

The first journal is very simple, with white paper and a strap to wrap around it twice.

The second journal has the Norse Web of Wyrd symbol stitched to the front of the journal. My understanding is that the Web of Wyrd or Matrix of Fate contains all of the Rune shapes and therefore represents all the possibilities of past, present, and future. I thought the symbology was appropriate for a journal. The leather piece I used for this journal has a rough edge with a long curve and tail that I attached the strap to and used a longer leather lace to wrap the journal a couple times around.

The Web of Wyrd.

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen 

A Medicine Bag and Other Little Things

I feel better now that I straightened up my craft room from the pre-Christmas crafting frenzy and can now move freely between the various stations I have set up in my hobby room. 

But I still have a couple leather projects sitting on my sewing table. This is the first of a couple of medicine bags I plan to make. I had never worked with leather before a couple months ago so this has been very much a trial-and-error exercise. Even the fringe I reattached four different ways because I didn't like how it was hanging. This wasn't the final version. After I took this photo I thought of another way to make the knots lie flat and in the same direction so I took all the fringe out and did it again.

This is another small leather journal but with a boo-boo. I cut a perfect cover for this little journal and it was laying on my work table when I accidentally clipped it with a scissors while cutting string. Yikes! Stupid me. I decided to use it anyway but with the added character of the extra repair stitches.

And another, improved crochet pouch for a mini leather journal. I love this yarn, it's a variegated cotton with wonderful colors. The pouch is all a tight single crochet except for some half-double and double stitches to form the curve on the flap.

 

And I did get the beads off my painting table so I have some collage work to get back to. I do have an area where I do bead and wire work but sometimes the thing I am currently working on temporarily encroaches into other areas. And once I get the leather projects off my sewing table I have some quilt projects I plan to work on. I guess my fantasy dream craft/hobby room is at least twice as big as the current one and has windows.

Thanks for reading.

Aileen

New Year, Old Projects

I'm still trying to get back to the projects I was working on before Christmas. This week I finally got all the Christmas decorations taken down, packed up and put away. At the beginning of every year I go through a process of writing a personal summary of the previous year and setting goals and milestones for the coming year. This often takes several days. I have been a journalist for decades.  I started journaling late in my 20's and each year since, I have strengthened that habit with more frequent and detailed writings, so at this point I am keeping a daily and several specific topic personal journals. As a result, a year end summary is not as simple as writing a couple sentences. It takes longer. 

So I still haven't done any crafts in the past two weeks to speak of. I did sit and free crochet this little pouch for a mini journal while watching tv. It's a prototype and I need to adjust the pattern some. The little flap is sort of wonky. But I added a bone button and its works the way I wanted it to. 

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen 

A couple things I did this week

Another mini journal. 

This is the fourth so far and it's hard to see the difference in this photo but the paper in this one has been tea stained. I'm working on an idea for mini memento journals with old looking (tea stained) paper with aged photos printed on some of the pages. That's a story for another post. 

And Christmas dish towels. 

This is the Christmas project I've been working on for weeks now.  It is a dish towel (or four from one yard of printed fabric) I designed and had printed at Spoonflower. There is a much longer story here but suffice it to say I achieved what I set out to do, it just took more time and work than I thought it would. 

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen 

Status Update - Leather Projects

Ok, this is an experiment. Because I apparently find writing a complete blog post painfully restricting and seemingly impossible to complete. I am going to attempt the 'status update' format of Facebook or Google+  for my blog entries. No one reads the long posts anyway, right, if they read anything at all.  It's all about the photos and less than 140 words in today's world. So I am going to write more frequent, but shorter and less 'informative' posts. 

In the last week I've been working with leather. 

I made two miniature leather journals and a medicine bag. 

The leather is all from inexpensive bags of scraps you can buy by the pound. I've never worked in leather before. It's rather tough to sew. You need special needles and thread and tools like a leather punch and a very sharp stanly knife. But it smells sooo good.

I have plans for more journals and bags and possibly jewelry pieces or embellishments.