Chapter 11: Final book plans

Throughout this module I haven't really had a clear idea of what my final piece would be. I've just been enjoying making all the samples. And while that was great at the time, I've now reached the point where decisions had to be made. It's taken me a while! As always, August and September were taken up with family so that has also added to my indecision in a way as I've not really had the clear head space to concentrate on coursework. Not that I'm complaining! It's been a good couple of months.

However ... I knew that my book would have to have meaning for me, but, as I've made so many books in the past (I showed a small selection of them in my last post), finding a topic that fit the bill and fit with the requirements of the course took a bit of thinking about. In the end two things aided my decision ... a tub full of agapanthus in my garden which flowered like crazy for weeks on end gave me my colour scheme of blue and green, which also chimed with the insides of the business envelopes which attracted me back in Chapter 1. And a quote from Alice in Wonderland that I came across by accident whilst browsing Pinterest one day ... "In the garden of memories, in the palace of dreams, you and I will meet again."

My mind played with the quote for a while and came up with an idea for a book about the members of my family who have died. I've done quite a lot of work on my family history over the years and this seems fitting.

Fig. 11:1

My intention is to make a book which folds in on itself from both left and right so the front covers meet in the centre. The left hand cover will have a piece of machine embroidered pulled threadwork inserted in the centre (cut into paper in the photograph above)  as in Fig. 6.10 in Chapter 6, while the right hand cover will have a piece of machine embroidered trellis work as in Fig. 6.9 in the same chapter.

I intend to make the back cover from stitched fabric with layers of embroidered decoration. The inside back cover will have my photographs ...

Fig. 11:2

In the photograph above the images aren't fixed down but my intention is to fade these slightly and print them onto some silk paper which I made at a workshop a couple of weekends ago, in the hopes that this will make them look aged and fading slightly more.

Fig. 11:3

I made two stamps of my agapanthus flowers from self-adhesive foam sheet stuck onto card, which I then stamped onto tracing paper for the purposes of this paper mock-up.

Fig. 11:4

I then wrote part of my quotation amongst the flowers

Fig. 11:5

In the finished book this will be printed onto a transparent fabric (silk voile?) and the words will be embroidered. The idea is that the pages will then sit between the photographs and the windows in the front cover, making the photographs fade even further into the distance, like distant (and some not so distant) memories.

The right hand pages (no sample of these I'm afraid will have images of a palace (possibly some of my photographs of Hampton Court) with the words 'In the palace of dreams' embroidered around them. 

The whole book will measure approximately 6" tall by 12" wide.