Embroidered Junk Journal Covers

I love creating patchwork collages both with papers and fabrics. In this post I will show you two textile art pieces that took quite a while to finish, but it was a joy to stitch them together. Both have a found pink rose embroidery that I recycled from the thrift shop and included here, and then lots of little bits from my stash.

They’re created on top of kitchen towels that my mom’s mom gave me many years ago. They’re white with yellow-greenish stripes as a double border around which you can see when I lay the first piece out flat like this:

This will be the cover of a junk journal (well it already is as I am sharing this, but I will show you the finished result later on) with hard covers dressed in this textile art piece.

I love creating beautiful things that is also of some use, like table cloths or book covers. Items that you can use in your home decor or as bags or journal covers, because that simply makes my heart sing a bit louder. Otherwise I would make wall hangings, but where would I hang those? Because all the pieces I have created could cover my entire home and more, so these days I also want to create items of use, even though I think of them as art.

I also wanted to share some close-ups of these textile pieces, because the closer you get the more beautiful they become if you ask me (which is definitely not true for all art).

I just like scrappy and almost scruffy looking textile pieces covered in stitches so so much. And the fraying edges of the patchwork, the lace bits sewn down, the different sheen of the fabrics, the cute flower patterned patch together with all the neutral tones.

Well, I love all of it, or I wouldn’t have included it of course! I might be biased, but never mind that.

All of this is hand-sewn in place with the visible boro-method or you might simply call it a running stitch, no sewing machine was involved. Handmade is truly that.

Cover of Summer Junk Journal 2

I am calling the journals made with these covers “Summer Junk Journals”, not because they’re specifically made for using during summer but because they’re related to my own finished and full Summer Junk Journal from 2021, which I will talk more about later.

But of course, they would be perfect for summer. Just sayin.

Here you can tell that the background fabric was a kitchen towel once:

I don’t know if you can tell by looking at the detail photos here, but let me tell you, this is such a soft, textured piece now that I have filled it with my stitches.

I love how the cloth is transformed by the stitches.

I also love how the different fabrics (sheen, texture, thickness, weaving) plays of each other and enhances each other. Love!

If you haven’t ever tried hand-stitching / embroidery I highly recommend you give it a try. It’s just the best.

A great place to start is with my mini workshop Stitch With Love where we create textile Artist Trading Cards and try different ideas together. In any case, once you fall in love with stitching, you will not fall out of love very easily…

You can find images of the beginning stages of these two pieces and some of my personal Summer Junk Journal in a previous blog post about the boro stitch, which is one of my favorite ways to embellish the surface of textiles. There’s also a video in that post where I show these textile art pieces in their full glory before using them on a journal cover, which I will write more about soon.

Until next time, take care!

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