Bookbinding Adventures

First I have to say sorry to Serena for dropping the ball on the Poetry Month Blog Tour. She got together a great group of bloggers to talk about poetry all month. I was supposed to have something on the blog this weekend and between work and my creative pursuits I totally spaced out. If you haven’t done so already, please visit the tour schedule and check it out.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASo I finally got to visit the Austin Book Arts Center and take a class on Saturday. I thought we were only making one journal but it turns out we made four small travel journals. I loved that it was a small setting with only five other participants and our teacher so we could really talk and take our time.

I had already tried my hand at some of these binding techniques but I can always learn something new and of course being able create with others is such a learning experience.

We made an accordion book with two signatures, a long stitch journal, a leather journal with tacket binding and a journal made out of one piece of paper and no sewing! I loved the paper the teacher brought for us to use. I’m tempted to use the Germany book on our vacation but I typically have a thing about not using my first journals of a stitch learned as I like to have them as my learning models. We’ll see. My accordion journal is also quite special as it has a Germany map on one side and Mexico map on the other.

The hardest book to make was the leather one (which is the orange with blue binding journal pictured). The stitch itself was not the problem but moving the needle in and out of the leather was tough. I probably should have used a sharper and bigger awl on the holes but I didn’t have one with me. Needless to say, I was sweating (maybe even swearing, too) and managed to even scratch one of my fingers. It’s still all worth it though because I loved every minute of it.

Looking forward to more bookbinding adventures at the Book Arts Center!

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  1. April 26, 2016
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