Flick Books

After a recent burst of inspiration, I recently came up with a use for three fairly deep frame / boxes I'd had lurking at the back of my desk for a couple of years:

Autumn FairiesSpring FairiesSummer Fairies






(Not terribly easy things to photograph, particularly Autumn, which I forgot to get a picture of until *after* selling it at Novacon....)

• conventions
• picture

I've been playing with things in box frames, recently. The first two that are finished have accordion-fold 'books' made up of little punch cards with (parts of) stories printed on them, along with story-appropriate bits and pieces.

Illustrated Primer






Real Programmers

• accordion book
• picture

A friend's mother has a book that I made a few years ago, which I never took good enough photos of to post (which is a shame, it was pretty!). She's been using it as a scrap book, which it wasn't designed for, and now it's half full and barely closes.

So, I was asked if I'd make a similar book to replace it. To be on the safe side, I guarded half the pages so that it has more space for sticking things in. Because it has an exposed spine, it opens nice and flat, so it's easier to write in, too.

It's sewn on satin ribbon with embroidery thread. I also sewed a green ribbon trim along the kettles, because they looked a little undecorative (note to self: that thread is really too thin for anything other than a tiny book). Rather than make endpapers, I just pasted down the first and last page of the texblock.

• books
• guarding
• sewing supports

Today, I made a couple of books trying out the Secret Belgian Binding, which was apparently (I'm sure I read something somewhere rubbishing the claim) re-discovered by Hedi Kyle after several centuries of being A Big Secret (which is odd: give me half an hour with one and I suspect I would have been able to reproduce it. Not sure why it was such a secret).

I used these instructions, which were all I could find online but which I really don't recommend: for example, they don't actually tell you how to work out the thickness of the required spine piece, just how thick it should be and how many pages of how many sections you need. However, they do show the sewing method, which is all you really need: I was a bit apprehensive, as I'd heard it was a tricky structure, but it's not, just a bit tedious and easier with a curved needle.

(I have a memory of reading a discussion of whether one should sew the text block first or make the cover first; the instructions I used did the latter, and as the former method involves sewing onto tapes and then (presumably) pulling them out through the appropriate gaps in the cover, or sewing the cover around the tapes-and-text-block-sewing-thread, it sounds like -- even with being tedious and fiddly -- cover first is less of a pain.)

Anyway, two Secret Belgian bound books:

The Green One The Pink One
















(I didn't like the way, particularly obvious with the thinner threads of the green one, that the cross-spine threads get bunched into pairs by the action of sewing the text block: possibly this is fixed by sewing the text block first, but otherwise I can't see any real way of fixing it other than having an unattractively asymmetrical sewing pattern in the text block.)

• books
• secret belgian

We're off to Montreal soon, and as I like to do I've made a book to use as a travel diary / scrap book on the trip.

Because it's designed to have things stuck into it, I didn't use a traditional book structure, like I did when I made a scrapbook for Sim: the levels of faffing required to put guards between all the pages (so that adding extra thicknesses of paper doesn't make the text block thicker than the spine) is relatively high, particularly when you then have to cut sheets of paper to insert alongside each of the guards while you're pressing it (so that the spine isn't thicker than the text block...).

Instead, I made something more like the book I made for Japan, but simpler and using scrap materials. In fact, I used the left-over strips from cutting the covers for the bookbinding workshop I ran at Eastercon (and completely forgot to post about until I wanted to link to it!), and the design was also very similar, but extended.

At the moment, the trailing ribbon ends are just loosely plaited together, to keep them out of the way. I'm hoping that I'll find all sorts of cool bits and pieces to tie and thread onto them, during the trip.

The cover is made from three off-cuts of Ingres, folded into zig-zags with a section sewn into each one:

The strips of Ingres are only stuck together at the foredge of the cover, because I wanted to be able to poke things - temporarily or permanently - into the covers as I go along. There's also a smaller strip of Ingres stuck inside each cover, partly for stability and partly to form another pocket where bits and pieces can be tucked.

The pages throw up a lot when the book is opened flat, because the spine has nothing to stop it from pulling into an arch, but I quite like the effect so I'm not too worried about stopping it!

The scrap book part of the process has already started: the cover currently features several of the Little Canadia images from KoL!

• books
• collage

At this year's Eastercon, I did a mostly-aimed-at-kids (although we had a few adults along, too!) bookbinding workshop. Because I wanted it to be fairly short, and I didn't want to have glue everywhere, I came up with a multi-section pamphlet (if that isn't a contradiction in terms!) design.

The card cover is folded so that it has a small zig-zag at the spine, and then two sections are sewn all-along onto it, one on either side of the 'peak' in the cover.

Inside the sections
Between the sections






It seemed to go fairly well, other than the fact that I completely failed to post about it at the time!

• books
• conventions

No longer a work in progress, I've finally finished the vague idea I had when Alison said "Do you want this box that the Christmas ham came in?"









The front is removable, and inside you can see little details like the eggs on the nest:

I suspect that this will end up in the Eastercon Art Show next year.

• books
• collage
• conventions
• sculpture

I've also recently done some work on a poster, again for a friend. She sent it away to be framed, and when it came back from the shop it had been nastily creased, to the extent that it had white bits showing through the printing:
Before

I flattened the creases out, touched up the white bits with watercolours (I'm particularly pleased with the colour match on the skin and hair, which was a sod!) and then mounted it again, properly this time:
After flattening
After touching up
Remounted

• conservation

I've just finished repairing a friend's copy of Mother Goose’s Nursery Rhymes, Tales and Jingles, with 400 illustrations for her.

It's, I think, the 1890 edition (some of the first section, including presumably the page with the printing date, is missing), and it was published by Frederick Warne & Co.

I originally thought it was a simple "stick the boards back on" job, then I saw photos and realised that it would probably need to be re-sewn, then I actually got my hands on it and realised that about a quarter of the sheets needed the folds repairing, but hey ho: it was quite fun to work on, and it only took a couple of days!

Before starting work:
Front cover


Text block


Mother Goose: spine (before)






(If you look closely at the sewing, you can probably see that the thread doesn't go into every section at every sewing station: it's sewn two-along, which is a way of saving time but is part of the reason it's fallen apart after a mere hundred years or so.)

After I went through and repaired the folds, the text block was ready for re-sewing:
Text block (during)

And then I stuck the covers back on:
Mother Goose

• books
• conservation