Jabberwocky!

I LOVE this book! Last spring my 7th grade students presented the nonsense poem, "Jabberwocky" in a reader's theater. This is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll for Alice in Wonderland. I loved the poem so much that I decided I needed to incorporate it some way into a book. While in VA this summer Somerset Studio announced that their March 2010 issue was to be dedicated to this very story! Kismet! Fate! Wahoo! I will be sending this book in for possible publication. I have been working on it for several months now and finally finished yesterday over at Jane's studio. The entire poem is "written" in free hand free motion embroidery (no, my machine did not write the text for me!) and each page has hand embroidered accents, some are images from a book I purchased in Powell's while in Portland last June. The front cover is also hand-embroidered, the back (not shown) was written with machine stitching. The final book is nowhere near what I envisioned, but I think I love it even more than what I originally planned. I used red hand-dyed muslin for the cover (the Red Queen), and tea-dyed muslin for the pages. The spine is a stick from my yard in VA attached with hand-dyed twill, the tie is also hand-dyed ribbon.
The front cover:

The final page (one of my favorites):

One of my favorite image; the flying salt shaker from when Alice rips the tablecloth off the table:

One of my other favorite images, the borogove bird whose body is embroidered in turkey work stitches to look "fluffy":

Whew!

I have working like a dog to get books ready to send off to magazines for possible publication. I am almost finished with my Jabberwocky book, one more page to embroider and then put the book together by the Oct. 15 deadline. Since returning from VA I have started teaching 8th grade language arts, sold our house and moved into an apartment and made almost 3 new books.
This is the rather "fat" book I made for April to chronicle our trip to upstate NY last October. It is made primarily from fabric and incorporates many of the souvenirs we picked up while there. It features the photos taken by April. We visited Cooperstown, Cazenovia, and Chittenango as well as Hamilton, Sangerfield, and of course Madison. The leaves were gorgeous as was the weather. We had a small family reunion the last day we were there visiting.
This is the cover: the colors of the book were chosen to work with the photo of the two of us at Grandma's house

A postcard featuring my alma mater, the leaves, and a feather:

A mini "nom, nom, nom" book with a pic of Grandma making bread. The book has take out menus from the restaurants we visited:

One of my favorite spreads showing my father's grave stone, the church in which Dave and I were married, and my sister and me walking through town:

There is a story behind this spine! I made the original cover at the same time I made each of the page spreads but by the time I was finished with the book the cover was way too small, so I split the spine, added some hand-dyed fabric, and re-stitched the blanket stitch on the edges. The book is about 3 inches thick! I'll be sending this along with my brown nature book to Art Quilting Studio to see if they want to publish them in their March 2010 issue. Keep your fingers crossed!

Cool Blog

Just visited Kelly Kilmer's blog and on an earlier post she sends her readers to Danielle Hession's blog. I loved it! She is interviewed by Rice Freeman-Zachery in the latest issue of Somerset Studio. Go look!

Yard Sale!

If you live anywhere on the northwest side of the Phoenix valley and want to get some good stuff, April and I are having a two family yard sale. Dave and I have sold our house in El Mirage and need to downsize for the temporary apartment and the permanent move next May to Virginia. I have lots of art/craft/scrapbooking items, we have a big screen TV, lots of household items......
We are listed on Craig's List and in the AZ Republic. If you need info like location please email me: penney.klaproth@cox.net and I will tell you what you need to know!

Coming to a Book Store near you in January!

I am so excited that my Needle Book is going to be published in the same issue of Sew Somerset as my good friend Jane and her daughter Jeane! I just received an email from the fabulous Jenny Doh, editor-in-chief of many, many Stampington magazines congratulating me........what a thrill and honor! The best part is that I get to share this excitement with my art sister and her daughter. This is a needle book I made from frustration and necessity this past summer in Virginia. I needed a place to store my different needles that would be labeled as well. So I created this cute little book to hold my needles, needle threaders, scissors, razor blades (for ripping seams quickly). I used the free-motion technique of writing that I learned in Ruth Rae's ArtFiberFest class this summer, got to practice embroidery stitches, and used some ultra soft silk ribbon. It was fun and I made two versions so that I would have one to use after sending the other in for possible publication.
Here is the cover:

one of the page spreads:

and the back:

Interview by EtsyTeamSNEAK

Celeste over at EtsyTeamSNEAK interviewed me via email so go here to check it out. I love the idea that this Team is sneak attacking new Etsy shops to support their handmade work. What a great support system. Go and see what's new in the world of Etsy!

Collage Packs on Etsy

April came over this afternoon to drop off a truck full of yard sale stuff and we spent an hour or so destashing my supplies. We put together some collage packs for my Etsy store. These packs are full of papers and ephemera from my personal collection of "stuff." Hopefully these will be popular because I have much more where these came from! Hop on over to my store and check them out.......... here is a close up of some of the goodies: