Knowledge is never wasted

Deciding that I need distracting and some deadlines in this new and strange way of living  I decided to have a go at the “are you book enough?” challenge, a book a month each on a different theme.

March’s theme is Hexagon.

40 plus years ago when I was taking A levels we all had to do General Studies. It was a new qualification and the teaching at the time was a bit ad hoc. Whilst most of my friends were taught topics such as politics and local government I manage two terms of patchwork (no idea where that was supposed to fit in the syllabus) led by the RE teacher. 40 plus years on it has come in handy.

Ideally I’d have liked to use a selection of more worn looking and feminine fabrics but because I’m even avoiding shopping at the charity shop I had to use the contents of the rag bag. The only stuff in there in a suitable weight fabric were two old pairs of pyjama trousers.

The difficulty now is uploading it to the instagram group.

 I’ve also managed a bit more scarecrow painting, not finished yet. Brighter colours this time using process colours and white.

Finally Finished

I’ve finally finished “Voices from the Lockout”

I had been intending to make a box covered with white cotton book cloth to house it in but decided instead to make a wrap out of recycled cotton cloth. I thought that the mills girls would probably carry their sewing wrapped in a similar fashion in order to keep it clean. 

My husband turned the scroll rods for me. The ends reference cotton bobbins from the mills.

This weekend I’ve also been to the September meeting of the North West Book Artists. We made miniature fishbone books and discussed future projects. There was a train strike and it turned into a bit of a trek getting back but it was worth it. It’s good to meet and share with other book makers. 

I also spotted an interesting book structure whilst browsing pinterest. I can’t find it again but I think it was called an Australian reverse piano hinge binding and I think it was credited to Alisa Golden (if I’ve got that wrong I appologise). I had a go at making it using some gelliprints I made last summer. 

The double spreads are cut in the middle of the centre fold and put over the mountain folds of an accordian pleated spine. They are locked in place with a strip of paper pushed through the accordian pleat.

 I like this structure. I'm thinking of adapting it for one of the NWBA projects. 

(I have no idea what blogger is doing to my font sizes!) 

And back again

It began as a book, started to become a set of three multi-layered images and turned back into a book.

I made a set of prints, of each block of text and images in both brown and blue on gauze. I already had a set of brown on cotton for the back.

The gauze that I bought wasn’t as fine as the original stuff so when I put two layers over the back image they obscured it too much. As  I started to layer the gauzes to see what I could do with them it started turning back into a book with the cotton as a cover.

I initially thought I’d join them a Japanese stab binding, something that looked a bit like blanket stitch, but even that was too obtrusive so I settled for a simple backstitch.

 I wanted the womans words to ghost through the images.

At the moment the edges are a bit too clean cut but they are fraying each time I turn the pages and with time they should soften up nicely.

Printing on Fabric

I’ve been experimenting with gum arabic transfer and text recently with the aim of making a small book but last week I decided to try floating the text over the image rather than setting it into it.

I considered different types of paper but decided that they were too opaque. I had been reading Sue Brown’s blog and she was talking about printing on fabric so I thought I’d see if printing onto gauze would work. While I was digging through the fabric remnants I found some shiny organza and some fine gauze. I also found some lovely lightweight shiny stuff (I’m not good at fabric) and some old cotton sheeting that I thought might work for the background image as an alternative to paper.

I enlarged and re arranged the text and re worked the images so that they would balance. I didn’t have enough of the remnants to do the full set so I’ve only printed some samples (using blue, brown and silver ink) to see if they would work. It looks promising

On paper

On sheeting

 

 On  shiny stuff

On gauze

On organza

And layered in various combinations

I went to  to see  if I could get some more of the same fabric but no chance. The woman said she hadn’t seen any of the ‘shnny stuff’ for ages and the gauzes they had weren’t quite as fine as the one I’d tried. But I bought half a metre of a couple of things and I’ll see if they’ll work.

The layering looks better in life than it does on the screen