Traumgedanken is a book about a dream with­in a dream. It fea­tures a col­lec­tion of writ­ten works on dreams, with a twist. Its author and cre­ator, Maria Fis­ch­er, com­bined col­ored thread with fine typog­ra­phy to pro­duce this imag­i­na­tive work—lever­ag­ing both the tac­tile and visu­al sens­es of the read­er.

In an e‑mail, Fis­ch­er said that the idea for this book on dreams occurred to her one morn­ing when she was “half sleep­ing and half awake.” How appro­pri­ate.

Although her ini­tial vision might not have been ful­ly devel­oped, the final ver­sion is an impres­sive achieve­ment. A cre­ation like this requires a design­er that can do more than sim­ply com­mu­ni­cate with words. The pages them­selves are part of the work. Accord­ing to Fis­ch­er, the white space on each page was designed to com­pli­ment the threads. The “ele­gant” serif type­face “picks up the thread­’s fine and frag­ile appear­ance.” Smooth paper was cho­sen to “empha­size the book’s hap­tic char­ac­ter.”

The intri­cate designs were care­ful­ly craft­ed with ordi­nary sewing thread. The col­ors were cho­sen by the author to high­light cer­tain key­words from the col­lect­ed works on dreams. After some exper­i­ment­ing, the final stitch work took about “two weeks, work­ing from ear­ly morn­ing till late at night” to fin­ish, accord­ing to Fis­ch­er.

Her advice for oth­ers who want to pur­sue their dreams? “Real­ize your ideas, even if they might seem weird.”

And that sort of ties it all togeth­er.