Lace Books

If you read Lesley's blog you will know we've had a book swap going on between the pair of us over the past few weeks. A throw away remark from Lesley in my comment box referring to a book swap, resulted in me taking up the challenge and before we knew it we had agreed some rules, a theme (lace) and a date for posting. Lesley's parcel arrived on Thursday and as soon as I read the beautiful printed card with its quote from Coco Chanel, I knew I was in for a treat.

Lesley took her inspiration from this lovely stamp featuring Sir Walter Raleigh wearing a rather fine lace ruff.

One of our "rules" was that our books should have some sort of container and as I pulled this fabulous box from the parcel my excitment could hardly contain itself.

And with just cause... because inside the box was an amazing "lace ruff" book

There are 91 of the most amazing tiny little books each stitched onto an embroidery frame creating the ruff.

And each little book has a cover printed with lace and pages that contain snippets of instructions from a book on lacemaking.

And if all that wasn't totally amazing enough, Lesley made me a second book (She broke all the rules you know!) Another exquisite little gem which I think is called a lotus book.

With folded pages made from little square lace doilies... to be honest Lesley... that alone would have been enough... it's beautiful!

In return this is what I sent Lesley. You may remember my drawings of samples of lace from a few weeks back. I ended up making ten little A6 studies of lace from which I cut away selected areas

These were then assembled into a "blizzard" book structure, with front and back covers covered in a fabric printed with a lace pattern.

For my container I made a box (this was a first for me) with a lid covered in the same fabric

I think both Lesley and I have spent hours on this swap but I know I would quite happily do the same again, without hesitation. It has actually given me a lot of pleasure when I have felt very stressed over the past few weeks. To be able to escape for an hour or so of drawing and cutting at the end of the day has been a delight. However Lesley did remark should she be so careless with a throw away comment again, such as "how about climbing Kilimanjaro"... I should ignore her. I've been trying to find out what date she had in mind but she's having none of it!

*update* I've had a request for how to make the blizzard book so you might want to check out this tutorial that I posted about two years ago should you want to give it a try.