Project Revisited

A binding in need of help

Now that the baby quilt is done, it was time to return to a bookbinding project that needed some tweaking. It was meant for the father of the baby and would go in the box with the quilt along with some other things. And in the time since I'd set it aside, I'd come up with two solutions for adding "bulk" between the signatures so that when closed the book wouldn't round at the binding making the fore-edges of the signatures uneven with each other as in the above photo.

I considered just adding more signatures in the quarter inch gap between the stitched in ones but I didn't think those long stitches could be packed, not enough space, and I wasn't sure about just adding a long stitch between the packed ones either. Then I hit upon the idea of adding elastic between the signatures like in a traveler's journal, and saw one of Ali Manning's videos showing a different way to add the elastic than I'd seen before. I could punch holes a quarter of an inch from the edge of the cover above the spaces between the packed stitches and thread elastic through two top and bottom which would place elastic down the center of two of the gaps, tying off the elastic on the inside. Repeat for the other two gaps. This left minimal marks on the spine that didn't interfere with the packed long stitches.

But what to slip under that elastic? I could use more paper like in the other signatures, sewn together with a simple pamphlet stitch, or maybe graph paper or dot paper. Not really sold on any of these. And then I had a light bulb moment. The recipient is a poet, and I'd introduced him to Austn Kleon's newspaper blackouts which he said he was eager to try. And I had a stack of old books that the library had removed from their collection, brought home with the idea of experimenting with art journaling/altered books and just waiting for me to pull some pages from. I made four stacks, one for each gap, trimmed them to size and decided not to sew them together so they can be easily removed to work on and replaced with fresh pages. Sometimes I'm just this side of brilliant.

I even did a blackout on the first one of these so there'd be no question about what they were for. Click on the photo for a larger size you can read.

These added signatures did not have to be the same height as the sewn in ones, I realized, nor even the same width. They just needed to fill those spaces that were making my book collapse.

Now the spine no longer rounds, making visible the first and last long stitches. If not for that thick seam running through the middle of the leather, I would have considered a leather strap closure or even a button. Instead, I added a simple loop of elastic . . .

. . .which not only keeps the flap closed but also keeps the top and bottom corners of the flap from curling back which they were wont to do. And too late, I realized I didn't take a photo of the back so you could see the way those angled seams intersect the horizontal one. I still have things to learn about working with leather.

I'd wanted to make the mother a book that was another 5 day challenge project, but got no further than cutting and weighting the signatures. Instead, I decided to send her this little coptic book which was my first project with the Handmade Book Club. But I was never happy with the paper I painted for the cover. Fortunately I had another one of those lightbulb moments when I realized that the picture of a stained glass Celtic design I'd cut from a magazine could be adhered to the cover to improve it. I'm very pleased with that look but I have to say the cutting out was not as easy as I thought it would be. I used part of a Scor-tape sheet, peeling the protective paper off one side and placing the picture on it, then started cutting those inner shapes with an x-acto knife whose blade should have been changed first. Yeah, that first cutout was a mess. New blade helped but I still had to be careful, I think because of the adhesive. At any rate, it needed some definition around the edges anyway, so a dark blue gel pen helped to hide some of the dinged up areas. I'm glad to see this book on its way to a new owner.