Weekend Review: Daydream Journals

 

Daydream Journals / Tilly Rose
Tunbridge Wells: Search Press, c2022.
128 p.

This was an unusual read for me, a book of embroidered projects which I found via the library. The title and cover make it clear that this is a book about making cloth books! But there are a few other 'wrap' style projects as well. 

The first half of the book is made up of instruction - tools, techniques, and lots of inspiration. The second half then shares projects for readers to make themselves. There is also a small stitch guide section included at the end. 

There are 8 projects in total:  a journal wrap (cover), sewing case, project bag, jar cozy, and 4 kinds of books/booklets. There is nice variety and some intriguing artistic concepts here. The projects are heavily photographed and simple enough to people to follow along. Some of the steps require hand sewing along with the embroidery to finish up a project, but it's all easily done by someone with fairly basic stitching skills. 

But the book is in the 'messy' English style of textile work, and so includes more than the stitches as part of these projects. The design and decoration of many of these textiles includes painting fabric with watercolours to give a gentle wash effect, solar dyeing and even using squished berries as ink sources. I wonder a bit about the lasting power of these techniques but they do give an interesting effect! 

If you like this kind of shabby chic English aesthetic, you might find some appealing ideas for techniques to try in this book. I'm not sure I'd make any of the actual projects in full, but some of the parts of the projects could be adaptable to other things. It's not 100% my style of making but still interesting enough to look at and see how someone else approaches this kind of project and technique.

The "Stitch Wrap" - probably my favourite idea in the book!