quickie - cool book binding blog

Just a quickie! Discovered a great blog with tons of book binding info, pictures, tutes, links to tutes, book reviews, etc. If you've never tried book binding but like hand made books, give it a shot. It just isn't that difficult and you don't need any special tools or materials.

Go forth and make books.

garden journal

I signed up for Mary Ann Moss' Ticket To Venice class.

(I do believe I've mentioned that before, however in glancing back thru my posts, it appears that I haven't blogged about it yet. Is it just me or does anyone else have a tough time remembering whether they've put something on their blog but not on flickr yet? Or on flickr but not in the Yahoo group albums? Or in the Yahoo albums but not in the five other interest groups they belong to? ai yi yi. It's getting to where I need an Excel chart to keep track.) In the TTV class, she teaches a cool bookbinding stitch that she calls the Diamond X. I used it on my TTV journal, which I'll blog about later in the week, after I get some good pics, and also on a garden journal I made over the past week or so.

I love book making. Love putting together the papers for the signatures. Love picking our an old book cover for the covers. Love choosing fabric and thread for the spine. I even love the stitching, something that makes a lot of people nuts. Juggling all the signatures while getting the needle thru the next correct hole while keeping all the stitches nice and tight while trying to keep 8 feet of thread from knotting - I love it all even tho I swear my way thru some of it.

We had a great garden last year, and plan on having an even better one this year. I always keep the seed packets of whatever I grew but they lay around on the counter until I tuck them in the junk drawer where they spread seeds all over the place. I figured a journal would be perfect. I can record what grew well, what tasted good, etc, and tape all those seed packets in here and there.

Her samples have the stitches evenly placed but I changed it up
and did 4 holes toward the top and three at the bottom.

I used a wide variety of papers - everything from fragile old ledger pages to very sturdy 140lb watercolor paper plus calendar pages, old greeting cards, torn paper bags, wall paper scraps, scrapbooking paper, book pages, used envelopes. It all goes together just fine, and if there's a problem... well, that's why the craft gods made washi tape, I suppose.

The little tree stamp you see on a couple pages was carved by Maria of the Marvelous Studio. Hmmm... it appears I haven't blogged about that Sunday either. Anyhow, she graciously let me stamp away with it.

Enough yapping - here is my as-yet-unfilled 2013 garden journal, a la Mary Ann Moss.

we made books

My friend Julie always visits in July. Julie in July. It has a nice ring. Last year, for one day of her visit, we made some pincushions from a book we got cheap at Barnes & Noble the day before. I have tons of fabric from my crazy quilting days and the upholstery samples worked great. Those were fun, picking out buttons for the centers and admiring each other's handiwork.

When I went to see her in January, we did some dyeing. Came out great... however, I can't find a photo of it, so here's one of us in Old Town instead.

When we were planning her visit for this year, I suggested maybe some fabric journal pages like I've posted about recently. Julie countered with books because she liked the ones I posted from Lenna's little book swap that I posted about here and the next 3 posts after that. That was fine with me, so I ordered up some linen thread for binding, swiped a couple tables from work and set up a book making shop in my living room.

We had a really good time at it and ended up spending two entire days tearing up old books and calendars, measuring and cutting, trying to figure out the various binding instructions. (note to future writers of how-to books - save us all some gray hairs and test drive your instructions by having a person of average intelligence who is completely unfamiliar with what you're doing, actually make one of whatever it is)

the book making sweatshop

We ended up with half the studio supplies out in the  front room. The bird and the dog kept us company as we worked away, and we each ended up with several books to show for it.

I expect I'll use mine for journaling. Julie has no idea what she'll do with hers. She's all into the process now and has made several more books since she got home.

No telling what we'll do next time.

Julie's Where in the World book

made from a freebie calendar of California

made from a calendar of Tuscany