Sunday, August 10, 2008

Making books out of scraps

I used scrap materials to make these books - everything was destined to be landfill (with two small exceptions). I used scraps of mat board to make the covers. The peach book has my handmade paper on the covers - which was made from paper scraps. For the blue book, I used a fabric remnant to make some book cloth for the cover (exception number one: the cloth was backed with mulberry paper and the mulberry paper was new). The paper used for the pages in these books, all came from the scrap box. So a lot of the pages have some printing or images on one side. The pages are a mix of some blank papers cut off from larger projects, graph paper and lined paper from old notebooks, as well as pieces cut from old maps, card stock scraps, old photocopies, misprints from the computer printer, notebook covers, paper cut down from large envelopes, etc. Both books are bound using an exposed chain stitch sewing - four needles for four rows of chain stitches. I believe this is the Ethiopian style of chain stitch (rather than Coptic, which is the one-needle style...please correct me if I'm wrong on this). I used two colours on the peach book to get the fun stripy thing happening (exception number two: the linen thread was new).

6 comments:

Ali said...

I love them Rhonda!
I am so into using up 'scraps' to avoid landfill ... and these are the loveliest scraps, the books look great!

Carol said...

The books are great and such a good idea to use all those scraps. I'm not really sure about the term coptic, it seems to be used so frequently these days. When I first learned what I was told was coptic, (about 15 years ago) it was done with multiple needles. I only heard about single needle coptic fairly recently. I think Dan Essig uses multiple needles and he calls them Ethiopian bindings (I think). So mine are made with multiple needles and I'm not sure any more what to call them, though coptic seems as good as anything until I hear otherwise.

MyHandboundBooks said...

thanks ali and carol!

I suppose we could just say they are chain stitch bindings, that would be correct in either case!

Anonymous said...

i love mixed paper journals. keep 'em coming!

marya said...

Hi Rhonda!
these are amazing! I'm a student and I'm doing a project at the moment, making my own pop up book. Its the first time id be binding or anything and i just love this method do you have any idea what its called so i could get instruction on how to bind it this way? :)

MyHandboundBooks said...

hi! yes, it's a chain stitch binding. sometimes called Coptic. There are instructions online, and in lots of different bookbinding books. Here's a list of resources I compiled:

www.bookbindingteam.com/2008/11/chain-stitch-tutorials.html