A Book a Week 2014: Made, Altered, Repaired. Week 28

Week of 14 July

Another Japanese Stab binding class!

This time I had 4 projects ready to assemble. The 3 smaller books' sizes were determined by the scrapbook paper leftovers from a previous class. I don't like to waste paper. And I like to think up projects from my materials at hand. The 4th book uses the covers of previously discarded books, so, yay recycling! It was nice working our way up from smaller projects to the the larger one, so we the stitching became more natural.

I took photos of everyone's books, but my camera was being funky and half of them turned out fuzzy. So, I decided to do a quick photo edit to make them easier on the eyes. I used Photocat because I like the name, and it turns out, it was super-easy and fun.

Oh look! You can see my cute skirt in this one!

A Book a Week 2014: Made, Altered, Repaired. Week 27

Week of 7 July


Wedding Guest Book

My nephew is getting married! We're tickled pink and delighted with their beautiful themes of vintage green and bicycles. I found a great 1950s set of green glass salad bowl with matching individual bowls, like this. I made them a set of 8 napkins with bicycle fabric.

I proposed that I make them a guest book using this roll of 1950s green chinoiserie [a word, which here means: the imitation or evocation of Chinese motifs and techniques in Western art] wallpaper.

My cool cousin Kathy and her amazing husband, Elton, bought this great 1950s ranch style house near Lake Mendota in Madison, WI. Kathy found a couple rolls of the original wallpaper in a closet and let me (paper hoarder) have them. The family who built it were the only previous inhabitants, so the original everything was amazingly preserved. My hubby and I took the old couch to grad school with us. It looked like this:

only ours was brown. Its best feature was it was 7 feet long, so anyone could sleep over comfortably!

I digress. I wanted the guest book to be able to lay flat while people write in it, so I was thinking of doing a coptic stitch, but I've done so many of those this year. I also wanted the paper to be a nice thick art paper and the pages to be large. I also wanted to add a little color, so here's what I came up with:

Here's my process:

Gather materials -

I cut strips out of 3 shades of textured Murano art paper, and folded them 3 times.

 Marking the holes.

 Here you can see how I folded them:

 poked holes...

 You can see the stitching here, but you won't see it when it's done. I'm sewing the big white sheets to the green extended spine before I sew up the spine.

I used 3 different greens for the spine, doing a traditional sewing on tapes.

I added a muslin super, cutting slits for the tapes:

I glued the tapes to the muslin.

Now for the case:

I'm doing a quarter bound book, so using bookcloth on the spine. I measure out the width of the spine plus the thickness of the board, add a strip of bookcloth to the spine for sturdiness, and only glue the edge to the boards.

Use your bone folder to make nice sharp creases and gutters.

 You can really see the pretty texture of the wallpaper here.
To make a nice corner, first fold one corner down with the bone folder:

 Glue it up

 Make a nice fold. Not bad!

Add pretty endsheets to complete hinging your text block to your case.

 Make a 1/4 inch crease as a carrier for your glue.

 The only thing attaching the fly leaf to the text block is that thin bit of glue. The other half is glued down to the board. I love this Italian paper.

A Book a Week 2014: Made, Altered, Repaired. Week 26

Week of 30 June

More Pamphlet Stitch

My sister's family came to the farm to see my bees and kittens. It was a short visit, due to busy schedules all 'round, but between pancake breakfast and soup lunch, we squeezed in some pamphlet stitching with my nieces.

 

This time we did a 2-section pamphlet using Readers Digest covers, which I love so much! Look at the pretty colors Megan and Kira chose!

 Here's Megan's up close. I have an orange-y red book tape that was a perfect combination with the salmon-y pink cover. Inside, Megan used a washi tape that coordinated as well. Look at the pretty Ex Libris she saved from the RD text block:

 

Kira went with a blue and maroon theme.I had book tape that matched perfectly with the existing RD spine:

 Here's what Kira did with washi tape - super cute owls! She saved her RD Ex Libris, which has a pretty fall leaf theme:

One more view of the stitching. We did a 5-hole 2-signature book. We used 5 sheets of paper per signature, and poked 5 holes in the spine with which to sew the pamphlet stitch.

My nieces enjoyed it so much they wanted to make one more thing, so we did just a mini pamphlet book with one signature and 3 holes for stitching:

A Book a Week 2014: Made, Altered, Repaired. Week 25

Week of 23 June

Old Irons as Weights

I do a lot of bookbinding at home. When my bookbinding requires a lot of gluing, I usually use a larger book than the one I'm gluing, with an old iron or two on top.

After I took this picture I noticed how disgusting the poor iron looked, all rusty and dusty. So I took it apart and found the steel wool and scrubbed. After I scrubbed, I soaked the parts in canola oil, and even rubbed the wooden handle with it. A day later I rubbed it all down and put it back together.

Much nicer: