Quick intro: I have finished exactly 1 quilt in 2023 thus far, and last week I was wallowing in self-pity about my lack of “production” this year. But on the flip side, I realized I have kinda gone down a rabbit hole of hand stitched projects, particularly this summer. I’ve made a stitch book, a blackwork embroidery piece, a simple needlepoint canvas, a cross stitch bookmark, and am currently in the middle of a learn-to-crochet kit and a second needlepoint project. I’ll be sharing all of these in the next week or two. First up — my 100 day stitch book!
After calling it quits on the 2022 version of the 100 day project after only 75 days, I was anxious to rebound with a successful project this year. Life has felt very full for months now (that’s putting it mildly) so I chose a project that felt approachable — Ann Wood’s 100 day stitch book. The idea is to make one ~5″ x 7″ hand stitched “page” over the course of 5 days for a total of 20 pages, and then sew those together into a really clever fabric book.
I started this project in February and just finished it last week! If I had kept strictly to the 100 day period, I should have finished in early June — so obviously there were some periods where I had to put this project aside for a bit because, well, life. But overall I’m very pleased to have stuck with it and have a finished stitch book to show off.
One of the things that intrigued me most about this project had nothing to do with making the pages — it was how the book is constructed at the end. (That link will take you to Ann’s page where she describes the assembly process.) By combining the pages in a specific order, and alternating using slots and tabs on each set of pages, you can essentially “weave” the pages together. You could make a book of countless pages with this method, and even make a book that continually grows by adding pages every few days or week. It would get pretty thick if you used more than 20 pages…but it could work.
I went through different phases as I worked on the pages for this book. Some of them I loved, and some of them felt kinda meh. It was fun to experiment though, and now that I’ve finished and see the result, it surprised me how well things worked out in the end — I was able to pair pages in such a way that each 2-page spread feels like a good fit to me.
I think it would be fun to make another book like this, either as a 100 day project or just because. These little books would also be such a neat way for a fabric designer or fabric enthusiast to show off a fabric line — just use 1-2 fabrics per page and voila, instant swatch book. I can imagine lots of possibilities!
Here’s a video I shared on Instagram of me flipping through each page:
And here are all 20 pages individually:
Enjoy!
It came out really well! Love all of the designs you came up with!
It looks wonderful! I’m inspired to make one now. The assembly process would also make a great busy book for little ones. Thank you for sharing!
This is awesome! I’ve been thinking of doing something like this and wondered about assembly.