100 Days of Organic Applique – The Book!

After a 100 days of stitching little 4″ studies I have completed my first ever 100 Day Project and have turned them all into a big fat fabric book!

I first wrote about this project in this post when I was about 3 weeks in so it tells you a lot about how I started and what I was planning.

I’m so pleased I kept going and finished the full 100 days! TBH it wasn’t hard to keep going as it was such a fun thing to do, but it did end up being way more time consuming than I planned as most of the blocks took at least an hour to complete.  I just kept getting more and more elaborate with the embroidery embellishments!

All blocks were stitched using Aurifil 80wt cotton and then embellished with Aurifil 12wt wool thread.

The image to the left are the last 8 blocks, above are the finished 100 in the order they were made, and below were the first 49 in order.

I ended up making each block the day before it was due (so even though I tried to do one block a day I was always working at least one ahead) then photographing it and putting it in my Instagram Stories and then adding them to a Story Highlight. Every 9 or sometimes 16 blocks I would take a group image and post in my feed.

Sometimes I got behind and needed to make a batch at once to catch up, or if I knew I would be very busy or away from home I made a batch ahead.

I never really ran out of ideas. These would come to me just from a glance around a room or the garden. I was working with simple shapes and these are every where. I would jot down little thumbnails when they came to me but sometimes I would just sit with my scraps and build little collages with them.

Once I’d finished all 100 and taken that photo of them in order (at the top) I started to collate them into double page spreads of 8 blocks. At the same time I started to stitch the front cover and spine (above left).

When I had planned the blocks I had tried to make 8 of a particular background colour at a time as I wanted the pages to flow nicely in the book (I had planned these for a book from the start).

But they still needed mixing up a little to make them work.

Once I was happy I sashed them with 1″ strips of off-white linen to make the double pages of 8. There are 12 and a half of these which together with the front and back cover and the info page makes a 28 page book.

Placing the pages in order and sewing these together was a bit of brain ache but soon they were all ready to be ‘bound’. Meanwhile I completed the back cover too (above). I took one of my favourite motifs from the 100 and scaled it up to fill the larger space. The book measures 9 1/2″ (24cm) square by 2″ (5cm) deep.

I’ve had a lot of questions about how I made the book on Instagram and I may write a pattern at some stage but also I will be teaching this as an online class called ‘Keepsake Fabric Book’ (along with the organic applique with embroidery part) for our Thread House Academy in Term 3. You can buy an Annual Pass now or wait till Term 3 or the single class becomes available later in the year. Either way the class won’t be live until January 2024. More info here.

However it’s pretty straight forward as it’s the same way that all paper books are bound, with each double page being inserted separately to the spine.

I’ve taken some images to help you all see how simple this is as an idea. You need to allow enough spine when planning your front cover to take the depth of all the pages.

The remaining page was the information and I put this off for as long as possible as I was worried I would ruin it (I have terrible handwriting). In the end I printed out the words and traced them on a lightbox with a fine Sharpie.

I also embroidered the spine but realised too late that the writing is running in the wrong direction. However some lovely German and French followers have informed me via IG that in their languages the spine reads in that direction so I’m now saying it’s because I’m embracing my love of Europe 😉

If you head over to my Instagram feed you can view a reel where I flick through the book page after page.

I am completely in love with this book! It might be the best thing I have ever made. Not only does it give me huge pleasure to view it also acts as a sketchbook full of future ideas and inspiration!

The whole 100 Day Project has been a joy from start to finish and I would encourage anyone interested to take part and have a go next year, find out more about it here.

Meanwhile if you are visiting Festival of Quilts this year you will be able to see my book in person at the Quilt Creations Gallery.