Book cover for my diary

I chose the word 'designers' for this module because David and I are often designing together - especially furniture. I embedded string in paper, took some pieces of fabric printed at last year's summer school with Cas Holmes and laid them on a felt background. I then hand stitched crosses on the printed crosses. Laid chiffon on top of whole piece, added running stitches in A and M shapes, stitched a diagonal grid to hold the layers together; cable stitched the blue loopy 'writing', and finished edge with one of my machine stitched cords.

Mock up books

In December I worked on Mock Up books using momigami papers as well as my hand made papers, and recycled items from my media/stationery collection.

This 'M and A' book is machine stitched, using part of a paper shopping bag as the cover. The momigami is made using my daughter's prep notes for her A2 Art exam which she completed last year. She studied fairies, so there are glimpses of her notes on Titania and good and bad fairies in this book. For those of you who are interested her final exam piece can be seen here
Gail made and embroidered 34 ivy leaves for the bodice of this dress.













This M book is hand stitched Japanese stab binding and contains pieces of my hand made paper. I stitched these pages using machine cable stitch.

Momigami book - failed!

This was my first attempt at folding 4 pages and machine stitching. One of the pages wasn't 'caught' by the stitching.

Jute Scrim M paper

Manipulated threads in jute scrim to form A and M. I then separated these letters and added them to sheets of paper.

Jute Scrim - hand stitching

Paper backed with muslin, free machine zig zag stitch to hold two layers together, and to secure jute scrim. Buttonhole bars worked in withdrawn threads.

Machine stitched edge

Running stitch worked by hand to echo lines in jute scrim.

Trimmed muslin backing, added a piece of my plain paper to the back and machine stitched the edges together.

ASPIRE Channel Swim Challenge

Yesterday I completed length no. 1416 and finished my Channel Swim in Ilkley pool. I am raising money for ASPIRE. ASPIRE's projects and services have a very simple goal - to provide the practical support needed for people with spinal cord injury, from injury to independence.

Just over 12 months ago I could just about swim 20 lengths in the slow lane. I swam once a week, gradually building up my fitness and stamina until I could swim 70 lengths in 60 minutes - in the medium lane.

I started my Channel Swim on 15 September and have been swimming 2 or 3 times a week since then (apart from the week my employer sent me to head office in Hampshire).

Most lengths swum in one week = 228
Most lengths swum in one session = 90
All breaststroke.

Please give a donation to ASPIRE at www.justgiving.com/stephaniemawdsley.