Book #066 - Mountains, maybe

Mountains? Clouds? Layers of...something? This occurred to me while I was looking at some pictures of misty, foggy places. I think it has a lot of potential; it would suggest a totally different story done in shades of brown, wouldn't it? Or the ragged edges could be at the bottom - like curtains, or veils or tattered petticoats. So simple, but I like it a lot.

Book #065 - Blue Weave

The book for Friday has six signatures of one folded sheet each; they are sewn and then glued (well, taped) into the single, folded, woven cover. The pages and the cover all made of the same lightweight card stock, but the cover ends up being a double thickness - so it's more "cover-y."

Much as I believe in simple materials, and try to resist buying every new thing that comes along, I do appreciate double-stick tape! To have glued this with a liquid glue would have been begging for wrinkles and warping, not to mention that the book would still be sitting under a stack of books drying - and very likely gluing itself shut. Yay, dry adhesive!

Book #059 - Doodling

I'm way late posting this, but I really did make the book yesterday - last night after dinner, sitting around at the table, in fact. We had an old friend over who moved from Seattle and hasn't sat down to dinner with us in a long time. After a few minutes it didn't seem long at all.

I have a 5-drawer rolling Iris cart tucked under the dining room table where I keep my upstairs supplies. (I end up working on the table most of the time anyway.) I found some tabbed notebook dividers, needle and thread and a few Sharpies. So that's what this book is made from. I doodled the cover a bit - don't know what it is. Just doodling. No scissors so I ripped. The spine is sewn and the cover is stuck over the stitching with doublestick tape..

And it isn't nearly as fuzzy as the picture makes it look!

Book #058 - Blank (blue) Slate

A uber-simple book for a busy day. You can barely see that its pages are two shades of blue and that it has a sewn binding. No separate covers...what you see is what it is.

Book #056 - Album-like object

An album/envelope/picture and ephemera saver. Pages are 4.25 x 5.5 red, blue and cream; red and blue pages have slits to hold things by the corners and the creamy pages are folded to make pockets on one side; sixteen pages altogether; pamphlet bound. OK.

Book #054 - Japanese ledger

A Japanese style ledger or receipt book, daifuku cho. Once very popular as a travel diary and as a guest register at inns, but most commonly as a merchant's account book. Daifuku means 'great fortune,' traditionally inscribed on the cover to encourage great fortune and success in business.

Book #052 - Yellow Question With Music

The book (cover) is yellow. The book (pages) are music.


The question, which occurred to me as I was getting ready to cut the cover down to size, is: Is there any reason a book cover can't be larger than the pages? Are there any reasons why you might like a book cover to be larger than the pages?

I'm going to sleep on it.

Book #048 - She So Pretty...

I found these flashcards at the Dollar Store the other day. I'm always on the lookout for unlikely stuff to turn into a book, and I have a particular liking for flash cards and game cards and such, but these cards were especially interesting in that they had two words to most of the cards and they weren't your run-of-the-mill words either.

No too-cute drawings of apple or kite - very few nouns at all, in fact - but lots of adverbs and adjectives and prepositions, with no pictures whatsoever. So there are ample opportunities to assemble silly phrases and odd combinations of words. Too cool! AND there were three different sets of these. More cool! I am so easily entertained.

Anyhow, I sewed one set into a book (the cards folded so nicely down the center) as seen above. The cover is minimal, just a piece of heavy cardstock glued at the spine. And those are the first eight pages. The story gets weirder later.

Book #045 - an Unwoven Longstitch

A tidier take on a longstitch. I made the spine first, separate from the rest of the book. As you can see it has five rows of holes (for five bundles of pages - aka "signatures") and six holes each. The holes show up better on this side of the cardboard, which was cut from a used Priority Mail box, but on the other side are all the measuring lines and marks. They show up further down the page. I used the finished spine to locate the holes on each signature, marked with a pencil then poked with a pushpin. When everything had all its holes it was an easy matter to stitch them together. (Remember Sewing Cards?)




The thread broke once, that was a nuisance but I just un-sewed it a bit and tied on an extension; you can see the knot. All the pages were neatly attached to a sturdy spine, ready to be joined to a cover of some sort. Now, the beauty of doing things this way is that the structure of the book is established and you can make the cover out of any number of sensible to ridiculous things - it's just there to protect the pages, not to support the book in any way. You can just glue it into a folded sheet of paper or card stock, as shown, or you could use fabric, or leather, or an interesting cover that you ripped off of an old book. You could glue the spine to the wall and never misplace the book.




There is one further refinement that would make the inside of the book look nicer; maybe that will be for tomorrow.

Book #044 - Woven Longstitch (Improvised)

Very 70s looking, n'est-ce pas? Reminiscent of all that macrame, which I actually wasn't into back then.

What's going on here is two things: first, a woven long stitch. This is simply a long running stitch that attaches the signatures to the spine of the book, basting it, as it were. See the red drawing below. After the basting is done you take the long leftover ends (leave some at the beginning) and weave them back and forth through the basting threads to make a nice, tidy woven decoration on the spine. At least that's what happens when you make the same number of very evenly spaced holes for each signature.

But who wants to do that when you can make different numbers of randomly-spaced holes and improvise a 70s-style macrame/woven/buttonhole-stitched spider web? That's the second thing. (See the blue drawing above.) Making things up as I go along is my idea of a good time, and this required a lot of that so I had a real good time! (So good that I went to bed exhausted and didn't post this until 12 hours later.)

The cover is just one folded piece of paper, the contrasting pieces were glued on later. This is a very simple style of book if you are comfortable with a hand sewing and improvisation.

Here's a picture of a very precise and beautiful (unwoven) longstitch binding, lest you feel that I'm setting a bad example for you. It is pretty, isn't it?

By the way - no matter how many or how crooked, you need an even number of holes in each signature.

Book #042 - ahead of its time

A simple book for a long and arduous day.

Book 42 does not contain the answer to the Ultimate Question - it's a self portrait deco. It has white cardstock pages and a tan cover sewn with a pamphlet stitch. There's room for seven contributors; everyone gets a two page spread - a whole face. I'm sure that no one I know has a head shaped quite like that, but these are imaginary - or maybe imaginative - self portraits.
As the host it's my job to do the covers, and you can see I've started a little pencil experimentation. (What am I going to do with that string coming out of my nose?)

Anyone want to play? It will fit in a #10 envelope, I think...until it gets too thick. Leave a comment or email me (liisa at liisa mannery dot com). I have two people so far.

Late. Tired. 'Night.

Book #036 - Pseudo Belgian

Well. This is my new Favorite Binding. It could be called a variation on a Belgian Binding - that kind of variation that happens when you're trying to do something from memory and can't quite remember how. The covers and spine are three separate pieces that are sewn together. OK, more like woven together - the spine just sits there with the threads passing over and under it. The pages are added last, at which point the whole thing comes together as a single connected whole. It's hard to describe, but it really is very elegant. I think its greatest virtue is that, although there are several steps, you do them one at a time, and none is really what you'd call difficult. So overall it's very easy. I like this book a lot.

Thus far it's empty (the pages are a pretty paprika-ish color) but there seems to be a theme building. The binding is Belgian (sort of) and the thread I used to bind it is Belgian linen (a coincidence) and I was watching PBS while I worked and lo and behold - Poirot! (He was Belgian, mon ami.) So...a book of Belgian? Horses? Endive? Lace? Audrey Hepburn?

Oh, and the window on the front cover is just the top layer of the corrugated board carefully removed to expose the flutes.

Book #035 - Black and White and White and Black

A four signature case-bound book. (What some folks call a "real" book.) The covers are made from some topological maps of the Skagit Valley; pages are cut from a tablet I bought at SightConnection.

SightConnection is the retail store of the non-profit Community Services for the Blind and Partially Sighted. They have a brick and mortar store near Northgate (in Seattle) and also a website here. Even if you don't have diminished vision you'd probably like some of their products. I go there for tablets and notebooks and really nice, functional calendars. They also have a big selection of magnifying glasses that always tempts me. Lots of other stuff, too. Check them out.

Book #033: Heart-shaped Windows

Today's book is a small, windowed accordion. It's made of three strips of slightly different lengths, each folded in fourths; when they are put together the difference in length translates into three layers with a little bit of space between. I'll probably add something to the back layer to show through the heart shaped windows. On the reverse side, in the center fold, there is one signature of three sheets (12 pages). I think this will be a good place for a story or poem.

In case you're wondering, it's leaning up against an old pincushion. A Finnish friend, Leo, gave me his mother's sewing basket, including a pincushion full of threaded needles. So this book was sewn together with a needle threaded by Jenny Utter in - I don't know - a long time ago. Jenny would be well over 100 years old now. Little did she know.

Book #031

Well I thought I'd wrap up the month with a big, wild party of a book. It is Saturday night after all. This was made with all the junk mail I've accumulated this week, plus some free postcards that I picked up at Diva Espresso when we went out for coffee this evening. And I threw in a couple of candy wrappers and other ephemera that were kicking around.

There are 7 signatures, each with between 3 and 7 pieces of something in them, sewn together with a 4-needle binding. My favorite pages in the book are the window envelopes from bills and advertising; that's where I put the free postcards, candy wrappers, etc. It's always a surprise to see how accidental combinations of things can morph into something unexpected and way more entertaining - see a couple of details below. This was one of the most fun books so far. I guess junk just really speaks to me.



Looks like I have some threads to trim. The four needle binding is the first sewn binding I learned. It is a very simple concept and easy to understand, a royal pain to keep under control while it is the works and very satisfying when it is finally finished.

Book #029

I wasn't feeling very inspired today, at least not where the book of the day was concerned. It was another good day in the studio, though. That was a happy thing.

This is a very basic sewn binding, it goes by a number of names. It's a running stitch - a simple in and out; at the end hole the thread comes out and jumps over to the next signature and goes in, and out, and in and out, and jump and in and out.....

And so on. The strip of gold paper was added at the last - slipped underneath those long stitches - and glued to the front and back. That's all the cover this one's going to get.

Book #026

This book's pages are sewn as shown in the left picture, and then a cover is glued on. The pages are 8.5 x 11 inch paper cut in half crosswise and then folded, so the book measures 4.25 x 5.5 inches. The cover is one piece of sheet music just big enough to wrap around the book. It's glued (with good old Elmer's) over the stitching on both sides and along the edge of the spine as well. You can see that the stitching shows through pretty distinctly. I think this is because the cover paper was a little thin for the job, and also because it wasn't completely dry when I scanned it; it may smooth out by tomorrow. Not that stitches showing is necessarily a bad thing...binding is beautiful, I think.

Book #022

Four booklets in one. Each color is a separate 8-page booklet, sewn together using a similar color perle cotton. Then all four are stacked and the ponytail of threads is tied in an overhand knot, binding all four booklets together. The threads are wrapped, in alternating colors, around the remaining threads, to make a "friendship bracelet" sort of cord. Another knot at the end holds it all together, and the ends are trimmed. The booklets are about 4.5 " square, the cord is about 6" long.

Book #021

Here's a book with a Coptic binding...sort of. I've done this binding before and thought I'd remember how, but in the end I had to make it up as I went along. I'm a great believer in improvisation; the first person who ever made a Coptic bound book, almost 2000 years ago, didn't have directions, and look how that turned out! Really, if it holds together and opens and shuts and the pages turn, what more do you really need? A book is a book is a book.

One cool thing about this binding is that anything slab-like can be used as a cover, as long as you have two slabs the same size and can put some holes in them.

Another cool thing about this binding is that Coptic books, and Coptic art in general, are beautiful and fascinating and there is a lot of information to be had. You could start here, or here.

Book #015

Right off the bat I have to say, "Isn't scanning metallics fun?!" That big black oval is aluminum foil. It's the inside cover of the book (shown here open) and it was supposed to look like a mirror. In real life it does a pretty good job. More curious to me than the color are the stripes...where did they come from? No, it is not corrugated cardboard underneath, Go figure.

The faces are just like yesterday's hands: two profiles to a piece of paper, folded. There are three such papers, making 12 faces in all. If you look closely at the unfinished faces you can see where the pages are sewn to the cover. The faces were just begging to have paint smeared on them and I obliged. I haven't smeared paint in a while, and it sure felt good. There's a bit more to be done, too. Another day.

As the faces developed the combinations and juxtapositions began to hint at little stories - the sneaky red guy glancing back at his wan and befuddled looking neighbor, for instance. And wouldn't it be interesting to plan the profiles so that adjacent ones would be identical (back to back) as if they were the same person looking forward and backward, or inward and outward - two aspects of the same person. You could use images of real people, or silhouettes. All sorts of possibilities...