First Custom Piece: The Deer Skin Journal

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine asked me if I could make a journal out of deer skin. “Why not?” I said, thinking it would be similar to leather, but thinner and maybe more supple. When I looked inside the bag she gave me several weeks later, I found myself to be holding a bag full of the scraps of home-cured, fur-still-on deer skin that were left after the hunter had made a vest out of the skin.

I’ve spent the time since then looking at other books, journals, etc., trying to get an idea of what to do with the mismatched scraps. On Sunday, I finally bucked down, pulled out the scraps and some bits of matching leather I already had, measured it, turned it upside-down, wrapped it around a text block, photographed it, and generally brainstormed. What came out of it was a rather attractive and original journal that perfectly fit one of the ~5”x7” text blocks I had already put together.

I used two pieces of the skin that matched fairly well, one for the front and one for the back, and then used a piece of supple light brown leather for the spine.

I sewed the headbands by hand, which I’ve decided is one of my favorite things about binding, and it’s especially cool because it’ll keep this journal strongly together.

The paper I used for the end pages and flyleaves is the same map paper I used to make my friend’s journal for Christmas. I do love it, but it’s a little too weak for the job of end pages, really. It folds and buckles, but that's actually kind of cool too because it makes the paper look even older.

I’m really pleased with the way the journal turned out in the end. Just a couple of final touch-ups to make sure that fur is going to stay where I put it, and it’ll be ready for its role as wedding gift to the hunter groom. :)

Embroidered Bookcloth: The North Wind

I posted earlier about a sketch for some embroidered bookcloth and the new fabric I'd bought. The sketch was inspired by the fairy tale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," and it's of the North Wind blowing the golden apple across the covers of the book. Here are some photos of the embroidered realization of that sketch. :)

Still in the hoop:

The full view. Needs some ironing, doesn't it? This will span from the back cover, over the spine, and across the front cover, blowing that golden apple away.

Here's a close-up. You can only see two kinds of stitching here: stem stitch and split stitch, but I also did a couple lines of chain stitch too.

Sketches for Embroidered Book Cloth

I'm so happy with my productivity yesterday evening! I went to JoAnn for some new colors of fabric to embroider on (it was on sale, so I bought 1/2 yard each of four colors for $4.12 (woohoo!): gray, dark purple, green, and sky blue).

Then I came home and designed a new pattern to stitch on my next bookcloth. Those two vertical lines are where the spine will be, so this design will span the entire cover.

Then I tore apart the last of those magazines I found and salvaged the last of those sweet pictures on the covers and inside. Can't wait to turn those into books and boxes!

Bookbinding update

In the middle of stitching on Friday evening, my last needle threader broke (it's lasted me for months, so I wasn't that surprised), which put a huge damper on the stitching process. However, I got a ton of other stuff done on Friday evening and got new threaders on Sunday. The weekend was soooo productive! I cut papers and book boards, folded signatures, and stitched and glued textblocks for five books!

I also finished the compass rose, and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I want to get some more colors of fabric to stitch on. Sky blue, leaf green, stormy gray, butter yellow...

Embroidered Bookcloth: Compass Rose Progress

Just a short progress update on my compass rose bookcloth. This photo was taken on Wednesday, and this weekend, I'm hoping to get the stitching done then cut pages and get the signatures ready for casing in. I'm currently pretty broke, so we'll see if I can afford to purchase some paper to adhere the cloth to.

Embroidered Bookcloth: A Bibliophile's Craft

Since I took my first bookbinding class, I've been fascinated by the idea of making my own bookcloth. I took up embroidering last year, and something I've been wanting to do is to make a series of embroidered books all centered around a single theme.

I adore fairy tales, folk tales, tall tales, myths, and all their incarnations and reincarnations. They're the inspiration for many of my ideas, and they're the inspiration for this latest one.

The first fairy tale I'm doing is "East of the Sun, West of the Moon." It would be too long to provide a synopsis here, but if you've never read it, I highly recommend taking ten minutes of your time and doing so.

I'm embroidering several pieces of cloth with images from the story. The first image is a compass rose, and I'm working on that one now. After that, some of my ideas are a golden apple, an aspen leaf, a candle dripping drops of tallow, the face of a white bear, and the face of a man combined with that of a bear.

Here's the progress on the compass rose so far:

And a close-up:

Hand-sewn Headbands

This is a book I showed in a post in my old blog, but it's worth showing here. If you click on the photo, you can see the headband more clearly in the large version.

I bound this journal for an old friend of mine, and it was the second hollowback hardcover I made. The first was in my first bookbinding class, and that class taught me a lot but inspired more questions than it answered. One of the big questions was, If you're binding books by hand, why not take the extra time to sew in a functional headband instead of just gluing on a non-functional decorative one? And how do you do that, anyway?

After looking through tutorial after tutorial online, I found one on a blog called Pied Crow Press. The photos are great and show each step clearly, the instructions are detailed and understandable, and my first headbands turned out beautifully. The beads on the headband on the bottom are a little rougher, but not by much, and the top one was wonderful. Definitely gift-worthy. Anyway, if you're curious about hand-sewn headbands, here's a link to the tutorial. Happy binding!

Exposed-spine Sewings

I've been spending some time on Flickr, looking at other people's work, finding inspiration and just admiring it. One of the things I really want to learn to do is different types of stitching, like Coptic. One of the great things about living in Ann Arbor is that Hollander's is right downtown, so I can go there any time for decorative paper, bookboard, or pretty much anything else I want. I can also take the workshops they offer. Next month, they're offering a workshop on two exposed-spine sewings: one is coptic, and the other is button-hole stitch.

I've really loved the other classes I've taken, but I'm not sure if I should spend $110 on a class or if I should just teach myself. I think I'll see how easy it is to learn from tutorials (that's now I learned to do hand-sewn headbands), and then take the workshop if I need more. If they ever offer a class that teaches several different kinds of stitching, I'll be signed up in a heartbeat!

My Awesome Find: Up-cycling Old Magazines

Yesterday on my way out of the office, I discovered an entire cart overflowing with old science magazines and journals. Now, if you've never seen a copy of Kidney International, you're missing out, but if you have, you know why I took as many as I could carry home with me. The microscopic photos on the covers vacillate between uber-cool and awe-inspiringly beautiful. I took a photo of a small sample last night, and even though the lighting's not that great, you can still see just how sweet these covers are. They're going to become the new covers of books and boxes, and I'm so excited to tear them apart and make them into something new and beautiful!

My favorite two: