Book #212

Japanese Album

The Japanese Album that I made for today is a type of accordion but the pages are not made from one long sheet; rather, several folded sheets are pasted together at the fore-edge to create the book block.

Book #211

Hantori chō

Another traditional Japanese account book structure, the hantori chō, often used for receipt books but apparently also used for sketchbooks. This one has my own hand-carved rubber stamps on the cover; they are characters that I copied from the cover of an old Japanese account book.

Book #210

Daifuku chō

One of the traditional account book structures from Japan is this, the daifuku chō.

Book #209

Cased Accordion

Today's book is a cased-in accordion binding. The accordion, therefore, can be pulled out but the first and last panel are adhered to the case. That pretty cover fabric is a bit of Japanese kimono silk.

Book #208

Loop Packed Tapes

This book is made using one of the techniques described in Keith Smith's book, Quick Leather Bindings (which is Vol 5 in his series). He has an interesting approach to these leather bindings where the leather is adhered using PMA (positionable mounting adhesive). I used PMA on this case and it is fine, I am perfectly satisfied with that adhesive on this particular book. The binding, on the other hand, does not make me happy. I like the appearance of the packed stitches, but I do not think it binds the textblock very well. Admittedly, this is my very first attempt at this particular binding so maybe it would get better with practice... but at the moment, it is not on my list of things to revisit.

Book #207

Perfect Binding

I am not sure why it took me so long to get to this basic binding; nonetheless, here is an example of the perfect binding.

Book #206

Stick binding

This is another structure that I found while flipping through the book I mentioned yesterday by Alisa Golden. The technique is very similar to the Chopstick binding that I showed previously (and here is a tutorial for it). But this version works for binding a stack of loose sheets, rather than for binding a signature like the Chopstick books.

Book #205

Split Board binding

I came across this type of split board binding in Alisa Golden's book (Creating Handmade Books). It is different than other split board bindings that I've done, so here it is as today's binding. In spite of my poor judgement in mixing these patterns, the structure itself turned out fine!

Book #204

Zhen Xian Bao

Today's book is a Chinese Thread Book, or Zhen Xian Bao. This is an obscure Chinese folk art that was practiced in some rural areas of China, and may still be found if you look carefully. Women used these books primarily to keep their sewing supplies (threads, needles, patterns, swatches, etc), and any other bits of paper, photographs, etc that needed saving. I have made this one based on the information collected by Ruth Smith, who introduced the world to this dying craft after she did primary research on these folded books in China. This is one way that they were made and my example has fifteen boxes. Smith identified many variations on the thread book; some with different structures and with quite a lot of variation in the number of boxes.

If you are interested, I made this little video to demonstrate how all the compartments open. I even have some random snippets tucked away in there.

Book #203

Linked Xs

Back to the 2-section sewings for today. This is one with linked X stitches and I just repeated it to accommodate six sections.

This journal is available on Etsy.

Book #202

Single Needle Coptic 1

Today's book is an example of a single-needle chain stitch binidng, often referred to as a Coptic stitch. I included the multi-needle version of this ages ago (Book #3). The main difference in the appearance, is that the single-needle version requires a kettle stitch at the head and tail, whereas the multi-needle version does not. This little book has my suminagashi paper on the covers. I am not particularly happy with the cover attachment on this book -- I need to work on that.

Book #201

Icicle binding

For today, I made a book with the Icicle binding, which is from one of Smith's book (Vol 3). It feels like a stitch sampler. It has a kettle, a chain, a packed cord, and then also the elaborated packed cords with the extra dropped stitch and chain-like thing. With a good cover attachment, it feels very sturdy.

Book #200

Flag Book

Welcome to the 200th day of the year! And may I present, my 200th binding of the year, the flag book. And a rainbow for Halifax Pride which is being celebrated this week.

This flag book features 200 flags, each cut from my own marbled papers so this book also represents 200 different sheets of marbled paper. It was an interesting process for me to get all these scraps of paper cut and arranged. There are sometimes stories or memories associated with them as I experimented with different papers and palettes, when I switched from watercolour to acrylic paint, or practiced certain patterns over and over, or made special papers for certain projects, etc. Arranging them by colour was harder than I expected but it did reveal a few things about my colour choices... I seem to do a lot of blues and greens and I had to really scrounge to find just a few bits of orange.

Book #199

Longstitch Variant

This started out as another one of Smith's 3-section stitches that he calls dashes and diagonals. As I was practicing it though, and trying to double it to use it for six signatures, well, it turned into something different. Not quite a regular longstitch either, though.

Book #198

Tied Bow

Here it is again. A two-section binding from Smith's book, tripled for a six section journal.

Book #197

Twisted Xs

It was a bit trickier to multiply this one from a two-section stitch to ten sections.

This journal is available on Etsy.

Book #196

Waterfall

A two-section sewing, tripled for six sections. This one is nice because it sews two sections through one row of sewing stations, so increasing the number of sections doesn't get too complicated.

Book #195

Alpha

Another two-section stitching technique, tripled for six sections. I did alter this stitching pattern a bit, if you are following along in Smith's book. I was not happy with the anchor stitch that he was using so I came up with another way to get it started.

This journal is available on Etsy.

Book #194

Xs

This is another 2-section Smith binding that I tweaked and tripled so that I could use it for a 6-section journal.

This journal is for sale in my Etsy shop.

Book #193

Carets

Today I have taken one of Smith's 2-section sewings called carets and tripled it to make a 6-section book.

This journal is for sale in my Etsy shop.

Book #192

Slotted Longstitch 6

I did not expect to have six variations on the longstitch through a slotted cover bindings; but, here we are. This time, combined with a chain.

Book #191

Slotted Longstitch 5

One more slotted longstitch variant. With Xs.

Book #190

Packed Tacket Binding

I first saw this binding on Dennis Yuen's website several years ago and he called it a tacket binding. The tackets are not made the same as other tackets that I was familiar with so I looked around for some more information about it. According to a small footnote in one of Keith Smith's books, Smith learned this technique from Betsy Palmer Eldridge and claimed it is "perhaps 16th Century German" in origin.

Book #189

Slotted Longstitch 4

Yet another variation on the slotted longstitch binding. This one, obviously, with hidden stitches.

Book #188

Slotted Longstitch 3

This is another variation on the slotted longstitch that I was talking about yesterday. It looks more like Book #137, but this variation is designed so that the visible stitching is symmetrical with an odd number of signatures.

Book #187

Slotted Longstitch 2

This is a variation on the slotted longstitch that I showed previously (Book #137). This version shows far fewer stitches on the outside of the book so it looks quite different in spite of the similarities.

Book #186

Tangent Bars

A very clean and simple technique from Smith's book for today. The paper on the covers of this book is some of my suminagashi marbling.

Book #185

Leaves

Another stitching technique from Smith's book, called Leaves, which I quite like. I picked this stitch because the cover features some leafy paste paper that I made where I pressed leaves into the paint.

Book #184

Cross-Stitch

Creating the X pattern for this binding is just like doing cross stitch embroidery.

Book #183

Packed Raised Cords

With today's binding, I have officially reached the half-way point in my "365 bindings" adventure! As I showed yesterday, I made a French Door book with two different bindings. The French Door structure can be made with any binding really. So today I present another raised cord binding, but this time it is done with a packed sewing. (I should point out that neither of these techniques, packed and unpacked on raised cords, are used for exposed spine bindings normally; however, this book is quite small so the bindings and cover attachments are probably adequate to support the book blocks.)

Book #182

Raised Cords

Happy Canada Day! Today is a big day for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is July 1st and that means it is Canada's birthday, whoop! In honour of the occasion, I made a book featuring our flag for today's post. Secondly, today and tomorrow mark the half-way point in my "365 bindings" adventure. Half of 365 is technically 182.5 but that is not really a day...so Day 182 and Day 183 share the half-way celebration. My Canada Day book, therefore, also serves another purpose because it features two different bindings. It is a French Door structure, and as such, there are two book blocks sewn on opposite sides of a shared back cover. Today's binding is a standard raised cord sewing, as shown in the closeup photo above. Tomorrow I'll show you the other side!