Here are the fabrics I chose for my son's second year fabric memory book. I went with brighter, more cheerful colors this time. Colors with as much energy as he has. The fabric for the cover (the bottom center one) coordinates well with the cover for the first book, so even with different colors for the inside pages there will still be a consistent theme. I also picked out the main embroidery floss colors I will use to stitch down the printed fabric after it is fused on. They match almost perfectly with the fabric, though I may switch up which color of floss is used on each color of fabric.
I still have time to finish gathering materials for embellishing, but I already found the perfect button for the cover closure and some ribbon to stitch around some of the pictures. I want a mixture of color and texture to make it a book he can experience with his hands as well. The challenge, of course, is finding things that aren't too feminine. I'm trying to decide if sequins to represent rain fall into this category or not. Thoughts?
I toyed with the idea of making my own printable fabric using the Bubble Jet Set and Bubble Jet Rinse products. Then I realized that was unlikely to actually happen given my time constraints. So I searched on Etsy and found the exact thing I wanted from Alice in Stitches. She sells yardage of pretreated natural-colored fabric, the kind with the flecks in it (just like I used for the first book). It's in the mail as I write! I'll iron on some fusible web, cut it to size, and run it through a printer with the paper backing still on to print the words and pictures.
It's hard to believe that almost a year has passed since I made the first book. It took several months to finish that one. I'm getting a bit of a late start on this one, but I hope to have it done soon after his second birthday. I'll wait as long as possible to do the printing so that the book represents as much of his second year as possible. My next tasks are to finish going through photographs, write and organize the story, and make a mock-up of the book. And each of those steps have multiple sub-steps. Phew! So much to do! In the meantime, you can check out the tutorial I posted from the first fabric book here and read some helpful tips on each of the embroidery stitches I used here.
What are you working on now? Any similarly gigantic projects in your mind or on your table? Do tell!