March Meander : Winged Things

I have an Intention to create a book a month this year : small and gorgeous, mixed media and stitched. I shared my initial inspirations for this project HERE.
I paired a lovely project by Susie LaFond called a Meander book with Kellee Wynne's online workshop "The Layered Page" which she is currently leaving open for free indefinitely. I began by cutting recycled book pages into 16 x 6" squares so that I could add stitch and then pair the pages front and back to make 8 squares before joining into the lovely book format. My chosen theme for this one is "Winged things" and I'm working with nature's palette of blues and greens for my backgrounds. Here's where I got to in my intro post to this project. 

Next was to add more complexity with layers of collage papers. Click on any photo to see it larger.

I then worked on each page individually. As well as my main Winged focal, I'm looking forward to including appropriate found words, fibre and stitch. 

This first is my front cover with gorgeous sari ribbon ties already attached but I'm not sure of the order of the rest yet.

I wanted to include some native New Zealand birds in this one 

If you are interested in finding a bit more click on the bird names highlighted : Kea above. The Ruru/Morepork below (So sweet. We had a little Ruru owl in our tree earlier this summer - also fond memories of my childhood growing up on a farm)

Piwakawaka/Fantail - appear twice on my pages. They are one of my favourite native birds. I have had this stamp for a long while 

The wood blocks of the Piwakawaka/Fantail and the Huia (now sadly extinct) were recent purchases from Tatter Tales in Waipawa. Read more HERE.

And this is the back cover : 

Now to share the completed book all stitched together. All the stitching on the individual pages was done with the same green rayon thread but to stitch it all together I decided to use a variegated thread. The Meander book only has 8 pages so I had to stitch the above pages back to back - I only stitched the edges which would not be stitched later to an adjoining page. 

Then stitched them together - a couple upside down hoping it will be logical when it opens...This was very tricky - had to go very wide with the zigzag stitch for it to be able to fold. Don't think I'll do this again with double thickness of watercolour paper.

This is the Meander layout - 'front' side. You can click on any photo to see it larger.

The book covers

And then the pleasure of playing with changing foldings to see different pages together

Very happy with my book project for March and can't wait to show you what I'm doing in April. See my other posts about this monthly project HERE.