Quilting + Bookbinding

= a new photo album

At one of our recent IPS Eastern branch meetings, a great teacher called Sidella demonstrated simple bookbinding techniques, and one of the things she brought was an album with a quilted cover. So I decided to make something like this for myself to house the photos from family photoshoots which were printed at about A4 size, some of them square. The phtotshoots were 6 and 4 years ago, and I still haven't been able to find a suitable album (and at a reasonable price, too).

For the cover I went through my (not very impressive) UFO bag and found this little panel, made before I took up patchwork for serious and so not a bit wonky. As I'm not a fan of the Sunbonnet Sue style, I couldn't decide how to use it and it's been sitting around for about as long as those family photos. But for an album of kids' photos it's kind of suitable, don't you think?

I added some matching blue fabric around the panel and quilted it in bright green.

The quilting shrank my cover more than I had expected, so it didn't fit the way it was supposed to (see the unquilted edge?), but, luckily, I had enough margin.

I also had to use gift wrap for the inside of the cover, as I couldn't find any other paper large enough. The album itself is 32cm by 32 cm (12.5'') and I wanted a continuous piece of paper for all of the inside.

I stitched the pages to the cover using the "long stitch" technique with bright green hemp cord to complete the look...

And proceeded to stick in the photos before I realised I hadn't taken any photos of the album. But it was fun to go through those beautiful pictures and realise how the kids have grown since.

That's a whole new way for me of using patchwork and quilting for practical purposes and it seems to open possibilities for Christmas presents...

Linking up to Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation