The past couple of weeks and the next week or so will be full of sampling, testing ideas and playing with book forms for 'artist book explorations'. This piece has been progressed over the past day or so, pages have been put together, combined with loose stitched pieces, attached to a sheet of acrylic paper to add a little strength and paper toggles have been made to adorn an edge.
A little like what came first, 'the chicken or the egg' I'm beginning to think about what comes first here, the stitching, the sampling or the artist book form. I'm leaning toward the stitching. There may be a vague plan as to how I hope the artist book will turn out but of course a page has to be suitable for a particular stitched piece or at least that's the way I work.
Paper is such a wonderful medium to stitch into, yes it can be tricky as some papers are very fragile but with care and patience it's mostly doable. Paper has a flexibility not present with cloth, it holds a fold better, it can be manipulated in so many different ways to cloth and it tears beautifully giving unexpected, unpredictable fragile edges.