Cover Story...

The past couple days I've been getting tweets & instagrams of my book arriving to people's homes. Just yesterday a package of books my father had ordered was delivered. So sweet. I thought it'd be fun to share the story of the cover and a bunch of the out takes with you today. First I spent a great deal of time designing the cover embroidery piece and stitching it up. All those little leaves!

I shot and reshot this cover so many times. I struggled with finding the right props, lighting and design. I knew I wanted to include my grandmother's sewing scissors and some threads with the embroidery piece....








Each time I shot I had various family members help by hold reflectors, being my hand model or assistant. Most of the images were made in the backyard of my parent's house. I hadn't planned on shooting there, so I felt kind of naked with out my usual props and equipment. Sometimes having limitations helps you focus and asking for the opinions of trusted advisors really helped too.

No one was feeling the doillies, so out they went. Keep it simple was my new focus. I found a vintage dishtowel at a thrift shop, used an ikea saucer to hold my threads, and wrote the subtitle on a piece of vellum (twenty odd times to get it right) and then shot atop an upside down wooden tray.

During every step of the process of this book I felt lots of pressure to make the best projects and photographs I could, especially for the cover since that's the first thing you'll see. I'm so very happy with how it came out. I've never seen anything quite like it. There's no digitized text. It's all hand written or embroidered, and just a single photograph. Love it.

If you're getting this in your mail box right now, thank you & hope you're enjoying it!