Artist book : felt & embroidery “not a sheep (anymore)”

I knew something wired would happen when I got involved with book binding techniques these past months!

Inspiration finally stroke yesterday when I was working on a new cowl design.

Starting point: digital painting transferred on Kozo paper

It started with application of a digital painting - a leopard, found in marks and printed on silk paper. With free motion embroidery I applied it onto a white, partially painted, paper felted background (ok if you never took one of my mixed media classes, this may already sound very strange :)).

As usually a lot of the handpainted colors had been washed away but some pastel tones and brighter marks remained.

Just some marks it’s all I need to find funky critters!

Heavily stitching to consolidate digital painting & felted background

After the leopard was heavily stitched to the background, I went on exploring the animals hiding in the remaining marks. Guided by my needle, I first meet a bird without a wing and decided to offer him not only a wing but also a blue eye.

The bird was talking to the leopard without wing & eye

With great pleasure I gifted him with a wing and a blue eye

At this moment I was pretty sure that the bird and the leopard would be the principal actors of the scenery. But I continued my voyage with the thread and to my great surprise another story revealed to me: A sheep pretty much looking like a car without wheels blocked my road and made clear that she was the leading character. This is when I understood: “I’m not doing a cowl - I’m doing a book”!

Remembering the just learnt techniques of how to make an accordion book, I formed four “sheets” through an embroidery-non-binding technique and voila - I my first artist book was done!

However there was the other me who had planed to make a cowl and I can be pretty stubborn. To enchant the other me I added two brooches which allow to close the book but formost all allow to transform the book into an arty cowl! Happy me: I made an artist book cowl!