Still trying to come up with ideas

We have had the last class for out design course and now it is time to be working on exhibition pieces. The work all has to be handed in on August 2nd and then there will be an exhibition in September.

So I am trying to finish off some of the homework as well as come up with ideas for the exhibition pieces, which are supposed to have come out of the various lessons. Some of my previous work will be useful for this and may actually be used as the exhibition pieces, I just have to decide later.

Recently, I have been playing around with ideas for artist books. (It was one of the homework tasks.)
I meet monthly with a couple of friends and we were throwing around ideas last month. One thing that has stuck in my mind is the title Booked.
I have taken that idea and done some brainstorming, then decided to make a folded book, based on a design I found in Cover to Cover.  There are a whole lot of patterns that are based on folding your paper (it is for making paper books) and then cutting in various ways. The patterns in the book seem to be for A4 paper, or portrait orientation, but I thought I would like to try to use a square pattern.

I played around with some paper variations and then worked out how the words would be most easily read when the book was made. Then I made a paper copy of the size I wanted and wrote the words.

Here it is, ready to cut. I have it with the paper template so I cut it correctly.

I had previously made a book using silk, then another with silk organza (I don't seem to have posted about it) and decided to try that again. Initially, I traced it all onto soluble fabric, then realised that I didn't use it last time, I just drew it straight onto the organza and then sewed onto it too. That way there will be no rinsing, which might affect the stiffness of the organza. And there is no reversing of the text, much easier!
I had used the silk organza in the hopes that the stiffness of the fabric would help the book stand up.

After many hours of sewing, and making up the patterns for each section as I went, it is done.

All the text is in purple, relating to purple prose!

The sewing is still heavily influenced by my doodling but I also wrote down for each section what I had been thinking as I chose the colours and patterns.

For such a small book, it is a lot of thinking. If I were to do an artist's statement, it could read like an essay. But it did help me decide on what to do. The work can , most likely, be interpreted better without all the notes but they were useful at the time and can go in my folder.