- Some assembly required: Progress on Close Your Eyes

Realizing that the first lullabye book was starting to come together, I decided to take some process shots so I can remember what I did when I make the second one ...

                        

My original intention was to stitch the individual 5" x 5" pages onto flannel, then sew the flannel together into two-sided pages, but it quickly became apparent that the book would be too thick. So, no flannel, just two pages back-to-back with a 1" strip of cloth along the spine edge ...

joined together with safety pins ...

then stitched along the spine edge, front and back ...

Note: I stitched the edging onto the front side, folded it over the spine,
then stitched the backside without going all the way through to the front.

This is where it got interesting. I wanted the stitch joining the two pages together to show on one side, but not the other. Which argued for Jude's invisible basting ...

but with the b-side intentionally visible, which required some thought about what exactly would show and how to get there. So I tried for a "wandering" stitch since I was pretty sure that straight line basting would be pretty hard to pull off ...

The resulting line calls to mind the Flight of the Bumblebee ...
or the path taken by any two-year old child on a walk

Last, but not least, there was an eleventh-hour addition of two pages when daughter Meg made a comment that confirmed what I knew in my gut: I needed to include all of the lyrics. Fortunately, I've gotten much more comfortable with the Pitt pen ...

and was pleasantly surprised at how much I was able to stitch in one day ...

Note: one word was changed to fit what I used to sing to my girls every night ...