Lenna's Nest Pages

I'm really on a roll now, working on my To Do list like a fiend. Fortunately the weather is dismal, so no need to venture outside anymore than is strictly necessary. We also resisted the urge to drive 8 miles just to get a newspaper (that is our nearest newsagent!) in order to keep that carbon footprint down. So I finished off the pages for Lenna, one of the TipTopJournal artists. Remember, every month we make one page for another artist in the group who in their turn makes a spread for us.

Lenna has just moved house so she decided the theme for her album would be birds, nests and nesting. Another very enticing theme and I found some lovely batiks to help me play and make some nests for her.

On the left page I went to town with a gorgeous green batik, which I layered up with wadding (batting in US) and I quilted it allover with a decorate stitch on my sewing machine (Bernina 440) featuring leaves. I used gold thread to do this to tone in with the pattern on the fabric. I added one of my favourite images in paper from Artchix's Garden Collection collage sheets. It has a beautiful landscape in the background and a fluffy bird talking to a beautiful girl. I added egg transparencies (also Artchix) to the top and 2 different nests found in my fabric stash. They are raw edge appliqued. Then added the text: My House, a Nest, which yet again are from Artchix as is the nest charm. All this was added to the page with double sided tape as well as zigzag machine stitching, in gold.

For the facing page I made a foundation pieced bird (I think it's a cardinal), using the fabric from page 1 for the body of the bird. I choose a gentle blue batik for the background as I knew I was going to stamp around the edges. I added borders to the bird block and stamped images of birds, nests, and greenery around the border, using a pale green fabric inkpad (Versacraft). The stamps are from the Birds and Nest box (so delightful) which I obtained from Alphastamps. As I first learned about stamping on fabric from Lenna, this seemed SO appropriate!

I then added gold stitching in the ditch as the quilting on the page (after again layering with wadding). Added two eggs at the bottom from one fabric and another blue egg from another fabric from my collection. The text Spring Song also came from one of these fabrics. I beaded around one of the stamped images at the top, added a beaded eye to the bird, and sewed on the lovely ribbon as well as the paper text: Every bird likes its own nest best, which was further adorned with Glossy Accents.

These were fun pages to make and I hope Lenna likes them too.