The Making of Harry Potter #1

This is the first post in a new blog series recording the process of making a themed Stitchbook.

Some of you may have seen the progress of this project on Instagram or Facebook, but I thought it would be good to have some space to be able to write and share a little bit extra about the process. I hope it gives you some ideas for your own projects and gives you a little insight into my creative process.

The book will be a large photo Stitchbook about the day I went to the WB The Making of Harry Potter studio tour.

Planning #1: Deciding on a theme and format for the project.

Initially I hadn’t planned to create a whole Stitchbook, all I knew was that last October I visited the attraction for the first time and had a wonderful day. I wanted to record the experience somehow, but didn’t have a plan for what that would be.

I thought about making several pages in my Stitchbook Journal to cover it as this is what I usually do to record the memorable things I do and places I visit. However as I looked through my photos of the day it was clear I was going to need more space than a couple of pages could offer. With all of the amazing things to see I had taken over 200 photos and trying to cut them down into a number that would fit on 3 or 4 pages was just too difficult. I had loved so much of the tour, that I wanted it all to be included! So I really had no choice but to go ahead and plan a whole new album focusing on the visit, with at least 12 pages to display my photo collection.

Fabric Book Blank: I’ll be using a Large Linen Stitchbook with 12 pages as I need the large size to fit so many photos in, and I think the linen will suit the theme and tone of my photos (most of which are quite dark) better than the cotton alternative (Large Cotton Stitchbook).

A quick note for the eagle-eyed: My blank Linen Stitchbook will look a bit different to the ones featured in my shop as I thought it would be a good use of some seconds that I have from the construction of the books (they have mis-aligned holes, or slight irregularities in the stitching). So mine are a mixture of styles, with the plain edged ones I create now mixed in with a retired style that has wine coloured edge bindings.

Planning #2: Collecting Supplies

The first thing I do when starting is a new Stitchbook project (and probably my favourite part) is collecting all of the supplies I’m going to use for it.

When I've decided on a theme I go 'shopping' in my fabric stash and pull together all of the pieces I'd like to use, including felts, ribbons and embellishments. I then have everything ready to stitch, and this really helps me focus and not be distracted by all of the other fabric in my collection when putting the pages together.

As we visited in October, the studios were decorated for Halloween, with carved pumpkins everywhere and a focus on the darker side of magic. So for my Stitchbook I decided on a dark colour palette of black, red and orange with the odd bit of gold thrown in.

Here is my current box of goodies for the project:

⁠You can see it’s pretty dark and brooding compared to my usual bright colours! I have tried to create a mix of textures, from velvets to satins, nets and felts, as well as find some patterned fabrics, although it was harder for this than for most of my projects. All of these are fabrics and embellishments I had in my stash, except for a couple of fat quarters of official Harry Potter quilting fabrics which I treated myself to specifically for this project as I could see them coming in very handy - mostly so I didn’t have to write out spells or Diagon Alley shop names in embroidery! For example the platform 9 3/4 patch in these photos is a piece of printed fabric that I have stitched to a piece of felt to create a sew-on badge.

Other pieces featured here are things I have collected over the years, such as this iron-on Ravenclaw patch that my friend gave to me (it’s the house i would definitely be sorted into!) and star shaped buttons that I bought for a previous project and never used.

The narrative of this book a little bit different to most of my other Stitchbooks. I have never created one centred on one event before. Usually I like to collate lots of photos taken at different times with a common theme to link them, or record events on single pages in a chronological journal. So this time I decided to push the boat out and really embrace the feeling and aesthetics of the day to make it feel like a complete world. I’ve gone full-in on the world of magic as depicted in the Harry Potter books and films, as it’s one of the only times I will get to create a whole book filled with a cohesive theme.

Next time: Planning #2: Creating a page plan