{"id":9067,"date":"2020-02-08T13:25:37","date_gmt":"2020-02-08T20:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/?p=9067"},"modified":"2022-09-16T13:47:38","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T20:47:38","slug":"xenotopias-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/2020\/02\/xenotopias-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Xenotopias – progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am really happy to be getting closer to a finished concertina book, titled “Xenotopias.” The name came from Rob Macfarlane’s book The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot<\/em>. It means strange or foreign places.<\/p>\n

The book started with patchwork squares depicting landscapes. Developed for practice stitching curves in Jude Hill’s Patchwork in Perspective class. Most of the scraps came from a big bag of scraps purchased from Deb Lacativa.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The next step was to assemble pages. This required a backing fabric to frame the squares, and an insert material for stiffness. The concertina should stand up when opened and turning the pages should be a soft but not floppy experience.<\/p>\n

My first choices were a stiff muslin for the background and cut squares of cardboard mailers for the inserts. I made a few of these, but honestly it was a painful struggle. The muslin was really hard to stitch through. I could attach the patch through one layer easily enough, but trying to assemble the pages was really difficult. I bought a thimble. Didn’t really help. I went on vacation, got sick, then the holidays, then a spurt of crochet projects. A nagging feeling that I’d abandoned the project.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the urge to dye kicked in and I dyed some white lightweight cotton with walnuts. On a whim, I laid out some patchwork squares on this dyed piece. Eight squares fit with a small but adequate seam allowances. A way forward!<\/p>\n

In one evening, I stitched all eight squares onto their walnut-colored backing fabric with white silk thread. It took another day or two to stitch the squares into pages, right sides together, with a beige cotton thread that blended in. I chose a square of mull for the insert. (I bought mull after hearing about it on Jody Alexander’s Instagram as a stiffener for a fabric concertina.) It gave the right feel, more bendable than card yet holding its own when the book was standing on end.<\/p>\n

So at last the final decision was how to join the pages. I’d saved a few Instagram posts of other people’s books with embroidered joins, but I wanted something a little fancier. I had learned a key term – “insertion stitch” – and a little YouTube browsing brought me to this video:<\/p>\n

316-Decorative joining of two edges with needle(Randa embroidery<\/a>) By Sushma’s Craft and Creations<\/p>\n

I don’t understand most of the narration. Only a few words like “anti-clockwise” are in English. But I could follow the video well enough to recreate the join in a green variegated Valdani pearl cotton thread. I finished one join this morning. Two more and the book will be complete!<\/p>\n

I couldn’t find any other tutorials on “randa embroidery” online, but I’d love to find out more about it. More ideas using this method of joining are percolating!<\/p>\n

Started join using randa embroidery stitch<\/p><\/div>\n

View of two squares being joined on my lap<\/p><\/div>\n

Finished join – squares not aligned that well! There’s always room for improvement.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am really happy to be getting closer to a finished concertina book, titled “Xenotopias.” The name came from Rob Macfarlane’s book The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. It means strange or foreign...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[149,150],"tags":[377],"class_list":["post-9067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-stitching","tag-xenotopias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9067"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11819,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9067\/revisions\/11819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}