The theme of the last book I received in the journal project I’m participating in as part of the Santa Fe Book Arts Group was sewing and stitches. We are encouraged to sew directly on the pages. This particular journal is spiral bound, and contributors don’t have to worry about whether the book would close after adding in their thick sewn pieces.
I’ve been slowly recovering my dining room chairs, with my newly reconditioned sewing machine, and thought at first I would try to incorporate that project into my journal page contribution. But then I remembered the Guild of Book Workers downloadable pamphlet diagramming 60 book sewing structures and created by Betsy Palmer Eldridge for the Standards of Excellence conference in Toronto in 2008. I’ve been meaning to try some of the patterns and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
I wanted people to see both the front and back of the stitching, so I glued a piece of tyvek to the back of the sheet I was going to sew, then punched my patterns through the two layers. This precaution was to strengthen the paper, making it more like a spine piece thickness and weight. I only had room for 4 sewing structures, and it was hard to select which ones I wanted to try. So I practiced about a dozen before settling on my final choices. I neglected to take a picture of the finished page before sending the journal on to the next person — but I found this post about embroidering on bread, which is much more festive then my own spine sewings!