Blanket Stitch

I tried a new exposed spine binding this week since Jackie's weekly challenge this week is "Exposed." This is an unsupported blanket stitch. It is my first attempt at this binding and the result is a rather floppy structure overall. I prefer when the sections and covers stay aligned better.



This book is only about 13cm high (5") so I thought four sewing stations would be sufficient; but, perhaps additional sewing stations would make it more stable. Any suggestions? I think adding supports would be the best solution - and I think I'll try that next.

I love to see books that other people are making - and of course Jackie's TJBookArts Flickr group and weekly challenge are open to all. It would be super to see more people sharing their book photos on there!

Album Problem

I have been contemplating the construction of an album for my postcards. I've been thinking about it for years, literally. Postcards present a couple of challenges: first, both sides should be visible and second, postcard size is not uniform. Jackie's challenge this week is exactly this - an album for postcards. I didn't come up with an album for postcards yet, but I did experiment a little bit.

So first, I made a Crown Book. When I first encountered the Blizzard Book a while ago, I thought it's structure might work for postcards. The Crown Book is a variation of the Blizzard Book. So that's the white and blue book shown here. This structure certainly does allow for viewing both sides and since the cards would be just slid into place with no sewing or adhesive, they could be removed and inserted anytime. This structure still expects each page/card to be the same size, though.

I also decided to try customizing the size of the book. So far when I've made this structure, I wasn't trying to produce any specific size; there is so much folding involved in the spine structure that the final size is quite different than the papers you start out with. So I decided to try making a Blizzard Book for MOO cards. I had a couple false starts, but did finally get the spine to be the correct size.



It's a fabulous structure, now I just need to figure out how to use it to accomodate pages/cards of different sizes then maybe I'll have the solution to my postcard album problem.

(That sultry lady peeking out of my MOO Card Album is a card from DangerousMezzo - a collage artist who has some fabulous work for sale on Etsy.)

Red

A little red-ish book, in response to the weekly challenge that Jackie issued this week. This is a hardcover pamphlet structure. There is red commercial book cloth on the spine, then i used the wide striped fabric for the covers...I've been backing fabric left and right...


The pages are a variety of handmade, textured, card stock, printed, and plain papers. Pale lime green handmade paper pasted down on the inside of the covers; a sheer green ribbon extends from the back cover to hook over the reclaimed button on the front.

Olive and Sage Double Album

I started making this book last year. I had finished a different project that had resulted in many many square pieces of black cardstock leftovers, so I designed this book so I could use the card stock as its pages. In fact, I had enough of these squares for 3 of these books. So at that time, I made front covers for 3 books but only completed one of them and it has been for sale in my Etsy shop for a while.

The theme for this week's TJBookarts challenge is "album" so that prompted me to finished another one...about a year later. And I still have front covers and pages ready for a thrid...to be completed...someday.

The covers are made with inlaid strips of leather. Both front covers have a hinge joint and the back cover has hinge joints at each end so it is quite flexible. And of course, a classic yotsume toji binding.


There is a little hasp on the front covers, attached with little tiny screws. I sometimes wish I could also be a metalsmith and make my own closures...that would be so much better than being restricted to the notions and accessories that are available commercially. I might just have to look into that...

Snow and Frost Book

I have been accumulating various fabrics with the intention of making book cloth. I procrastinate the making of book cloth, because I have found it to be a rather messy process; I don't have any great surfaces to use; and I don't always have great results. But then I discovered that I could use an iron-on adhesive webbing like Heat-n-bond. Jackie has a quick description of this process on her website - so that is what I did this week. I bought some heat-n-bond stuff and made up a pile of book cloth! Due to the Winter theme of Jackie's book challenge, two of the fabrics that I backed were the ones on this little book, because they look like frost and snow of course!


This is a hardcover pamphlet. Just one section inside. The pages are cream-coloured 90 g/m2 (24lb) recycled paper. The paper that is pasted down on the inside of the covers is some terrific handmade tree-free paper from India that my friend got for me when he was visiting there.

This might be a better picture, taken in the sunlight. The sun was shining on one side of the deck, but I couldn't get a snowy background AND have direct sunlight at the same time...

The texture book

This theme for this week's challenge was "texture." So I set out with a couple of things in mind. I wanted to create a paste paper using texture, and have various textures inside the book as well.


I haven't done paste papers much, so I had to play with it a bit to get something I liked. The resulting paste paper was made using a handful of crumpled paper to make the marks in the paste.


Inside the book, I used several different materials for the pages so there would be layers of texture. There are various types of handmade paper, a piece of leather, some corrugated cardboard, eska board, a couple sections of drawing paper, a piece of vinyl, some various sheets of cardstock, and some more paste paper too.

It is bound using one of Keith Smith's chain stitch sewings for binding single sheets.

You can check out the other books that have been done for these challenges by visiting the TJBookArts group on Flickr.

Under Wraps

I decided to try a Braided Spine binding for this book. So it has a wrap-around leather cover with a wrap-around strap. Then it is bound with three separate threads (and six needles) which wrap the head and tail of the book, then all the threads wrap around each other as they are braided on the spine.


I really like the look of this and many of the other 3-section bindings that Smith has devised, although I don't like restricting my books to 3 sections since they are usually journals and people like having lots of pages.... I suppose it could be doubled to have six sections so there would be two sets of braids... can't quite imagine doing them simultaneously with 12 needles on the go... now THAT would be a challenge for sure! Thanks Jackie (tjbookarts.com) for making me do something new again this week!

Weaving my book

Thanks to Jackie, TJBookarts, I tried weaving some leather. She is having a weekly challenge and this week the theme was "scraps." So when I investigated my leather scrap boxes, I discovered that I had a lot of long narrow strips of leather in there. So, I thought maybe I could weave them.

My experience with weaving is limited to the little paper baskets we made in grade one for Easter. So that is all the knowledge I had to work with here. Initially I thought perhaps it would make a nice placemat.


I secured and trimmed the edges.


I didn't do anything else to it, most of the leather that I used was a bit thick. So I just sewed directly through the cover to attach the signatures. I think a woven mat like this could be used to cover a hardcover book if it was made with much thinner leather strips. I'm not very good at paring so I'm going to start saving thinner strips. I've added that idea to my list of future projects to do as soon as I have some time.