by Steve | Sep 11, 2014 | Tutorials |
A short time ago, I posted some pictures of a jig I was building as a visual aid to help teach students in my book binding classes coptic sewing. I’ve finished the contraption up and I’ve dubbed it the High Speed Sewing Simulator. There’s really no compelling reason to talk about the jig itself so instead, I’ve completed a video tutorial on sewing the Locking Coptic Stitch. The Locking Coptic Stitch is an exposed spine sewing and it’s a variation on the traditional Coptic Stitch. I sew it this way simply because I feel it adds a little more structural integrity to the sewing. Enjoy.
by Steve | Aug 12, 2014 | Bookbinding, Classes, Coptic Stitch |
I’ve been teaching the Coptic stitch a lot lately and I’ve been thinking about how to teach it better. When it comes time to teach the stitch during the class everybody gathers around to watch and that’s where the problem is. Everything is too small. with a half-dozed or more people gathered around looking over my shoulder it’s hard to see what’s going on. I’ve tried doing things like sewing with two different colored threads but at the end of the day, nobody can get close enough to see what’s going on during the demo.
I’ve decided to scale up and build a demo rig so everybody can see what’s happening during the demo. I just started working on it today and I hope to have it done soon but here’s what I’ve got so far, I hope to have it done by the end of the week.
by Steve | Aug 4, 2014 | Art Retreats, Art Unraveled, Bookbinding, Classes, Events |
Art Unraveled has been going on for the past week or so and it’s been a great event. This past Saturday the Shopping Extravaganza took place and a wide variety of artists and vendors where there selling everything from handmade journals to stencils. Classes start late on Saturday so everyone has plenty of time to shop and I had just enough time to check everything out before teaching my class, “Dug from the Ruins: A Polymer Clay Art Journal”.
Today, I taught my class titled “Worn by Time: A Coptic Bound Art Journal.” In this class, students use Milk Paint to transform ordinary oak boards into a 3″ x 5″ journal. The morning was spent drilling holes for the binding, building up layers of color using Milk Paint and the distressing the surface to reveal those layers and simulate the look of wear and age. For many, the Coptic Sewing is hard to learn so the rest of the day was reserved for sewing demonstrations and hands on help with the binding.
Students finished their books by setting a small image into a bezel and attaching that to the cover and then installing a simple closure that was fabricated from brass. It was a great group of students and their books turned out exceptionally well. I hope to see them again in the future at other events.
A student distresses the covers of their journal in the “Worn By Time” class.
by Steve | Dec 27, 2012 | Bookbinding, Scrap Books |
I’ve written in the past about what I affectionately call Scrapbooks. If you missed that posting in the past, Scrapbooks are books that I bind from the scrap material that is left over from other projects and generally, they tend to be on the small side. A few days ago, I found a long, skinny piece of red oak that was about 3″ X 24″. My first impulse was to cut it up into several pieces and make three of four scrapbooks, but then I stopped and thought about making a book that was long and skinny instead.
I finished the covers with several coats of milk paint in several different colors, and then create a distressed finish by sanding through the paint. After I finished the covers, I felt that they needed something more, so I made a band of polymer clay faces to attach to the cover to give it a more dimensional feel. Eight signatures of 200gm Artistico Fabriano watercolor paper were sewn to a leather spine with 4-ply Irish Linen thread which was then sewn to the covers. Here are some images of the finished journal, you can click on the images to view them in more detail.
Long and Skinny, Front View
Long and Skinny, Sewing Detail
Long and Skinny, Back View
by Steve | Jan 10, 2010 | Bookbinding |
For those of you who may not know, PLAY is an annual journaling retreat hosted by Teesha and Tracy Moore. One of the features of PLAY is a optional swap. For the past two years, I’ve bound a small 3 1/2″ X 5 1/2″ pocket journal for each participant. For the last two years I’ve made the same book, I settled on the design the first year because they’re easy to make and sew and since I’m putting about fifty of them together, well… you can see the logic. I do change the cover design and last year I also included a second small book which was based on the design of a Moleskine Cahier.
I thought about doing some small leather books this year but as time got tight, I decided to do the same one yet again. This year, I ran into a problem with the covers. I make the covers using two sheets of paper glued together, I use Rives BFK on the outside and black Rising Stonehenge on the inside. In the past I’ve decorated the cover with a simple acrylic wash and then printed the cover art with a Gocco. I wanted a little more texture this year so I went with Paste Paper, when I Gocco’ed the design on the prototype I found that the text and the artwork got lost in the design or the paste paper. I mentioned the problem to Cindy Iverson at The Paper Studio and she suggested using the letterpress; we set up the job so the design would have a little punch. The embossed quality the letterpress lent to the cover makes it work. Here’s a photo of the printing job in process.
Once the cover design wan printed the rest of the process was fairly straightforward, throw on a movie and just keep sewing like a madman until their all done. I ended up making 53 books, enough for everybody attending and a couple of extras — one for Andrew Borloz at Urban Paper Arts and one for Cindy at The Paper Studio for her help with the letterpress. Here are a couple of photos as they near the end of the process, the Gocco printing of the Colophon and the books waiting to have the Colophon pasted and then get packed up.
