Tuesday 16 June 2015

How to tart up an old book.

Hello. I don't know where the time goes, I'm rushing again. It's been a lovely day, I've been out in the garden tidying up. My veg growing is looking abysmal this year. Things are not growing very well at all, except the potatoes, they are positively thriving. My compost is about on it's last legs, I don't bother to feed it, so at last it's about dead. A few beans are making a brave attempt to grow, but they are struggling. Every night armies of fat black slugs slither about eating everything in their path. In past years I have spent hours picking them up, out for an hour every night with a torch. I am now ready to admit defeat, they have won the battle. For this year anyway. 
Today I covered another 'Ilona', book. It's a hard back, in quite good condition. I used some plain dark blue fabric as the cover, with red and light green for the embellishment. The colours are wrong on this photo. I frayed the edges of the red and green, and used green cotton to hand stitch the design on the front panel. 

Inside the front cover, this is the exact shade of blue.

I hand stitched along the top and bottom in tiny stitches with matching thread.

I cut the piece of blue fabric bigger than the book and made a cut each side of the spine and folded the excess inside. It looks really nice.
If you want to know how to stitch perfect stars, use a template that has squares. This is a piece of plastic I cut from a mushroom tray. They end up in the bin outside our takeaway and I get them out. These trays  come in useful for all kinds of jobs, mainly storage, I've got loads of them.
Thank you for popping in. Catch you tomorrow. Toodle pip

12 comments:

  1. It looks lovely, Ilona. I was wondering how you lined up those stars so perfectly!
    Is this to be sold for the cat fund or is it a gift? JanF

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    1. Hello. No, this is mine to keep. The cover was made for the book, the book is called Ilona, one of six copies I have, and not for sale.

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  2. Any one know what has happened to Sweetblondieblueeyes?

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    1. Hello. I've just checked, she is still there, last posted on Saturday 13th June.

      http://sweetblondieblueeyes.blogspot.co.uk/

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    2. I'm worried too! She never misses a day.

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  3. Like the cover - and the clever mushroom tray recycling x

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  4. Nice book cover.
    Ilona...try coffee. I've read that if you make a cup of coffee and pour it around where the slugs are they will die off because they can't process the caffeine.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Jake. I've just been out in the garden, I would need a gallon of coffee, there are literally hundreds of the pesky blighters. There was a hedgehog too. I thought they were supposed to eat slugs.

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  5. I love the cover, it's bright & pretty!
    If you put a small low pan, like a metal pie plate out in your garden, put some beer into the bottom of it,and the slugs will crawl into it and drown. They love the yeasty stuff. Just as long as the pan is deep enough so they can't get out once they are in it.
    I would think after they are discarded out of it , the beer would be good in your compost.
    As long as you can get the beer cheap enough, it would be a good way to rid yourself of them.

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  6. Around here, people fill saucers with stale beer and leave them around overnight for slug traps. I don't know if the beer kills the slugs or just makes them argumentative.

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  7. Hi.Sorry to hear your garden's invaded by slugs and that it's in the multitudes.Poor you! There are lots of home remedy type methods out there.I have had success with the beer method.When we had chickens we had very few problems with garden plants being devoured by pests,because they did a great job by eating them and saving us a lot of hand picking to remove them.Your book cover colour and pattern is lovely and unique.Very nice way to protect and spruce up a book.And......I had no idea hedgehogs ate slugs .I'm always learning something by visiting ,:)bye for now,D.

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  8. That is my favorite color of blue, Ilona...so pretty on your book.

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