Focus on Autumn

A little meditation on autumn, in pictures. No words today.

More Adventures in Bookmaking

Fall is a fruitful time for me creatively. Over the last two autumns, when I was deeply immersed in reading craft blogs, I worried that all of the ideas and images popping into my head weren't my own but were inspired directly from things I'd seen online. But this year I've cut way back on my evening blog reading (ah, I do miss you all!!) to be able to be more present with my family, and those ideas keep coming. Half, or more, won't ever blossom, or might not bear fruit in the way I intended, but it's good to know that the seeds of inspiration remain.

The idea for the "Harvest" journal above came to me piecemeal, initially as a fertile "what if" of the kind that Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth uses. What if I made a book cover out of fabric? I was way too impatient to look for an online tutorial to do it the "right" way, so I just winged it. (Apologies to the professional bookbinders among you; I already have ideas for how to improve Harvest 2.0.)

The cover is upcycled from a vintage tablecloth that I believe belonged to my husband's grandmother. She and her husband ran an apple orchard and farm in Wisconsin, and my mother-in-law grew up there. I was fortunate to visit the farm once or twice before it was sold, and the apples were amazing in their varying hues and subtle flavors--I had never known that there were so many varieties of apples. So the imagery has special significance for me, and the tablecloth itself, after decades of use through four generations, was too stained and holey to be used on the table any more.

The sort-of haiku on the cover is what makes me happiest about the book. It came to me as I was rocking my preschooler, who has been having a rough patch at school lately. I love how the first six words are punchy single syllables that can be used as either a noun or a verb, depending on the context. On the back is printed "tart," and all that evokes (!).

Best of all was that I could finally use the freezer-paper stencil technique that Maya showed me how to do (see her tips here). I downloaded a font that looks like the lettering from a produce bag to make the stencil. The cutting took a while, but it was very meditative. I think I've finally made peace with the fact that I need "reading" glasses, a very strong light, and new, sharp blades to do precise cutting work. I guess I'm lucky that my husband finds the studious librarian look attractive.

I used some personalized linen/cotton stationery that I found at a junk shop for the pages, and the stationery has quite a poignant connection for me as well. I didn't do more than glance at the printing when I bought the box of stationery; I just knew that I liked the richness of the paper and wanted to use it for a book I was making for Smoothpebble. When I got home, I realized that the stationery had an address for a house that is on the street right behind mine, the street that begins my regular walk, in fact. It's a 50s Modern house, low and streamlined and sided with dark cedar. I did a little Web research and learned a bit about the family who lived there. Now when I walk past the house I imagine the lives lived in that house and what it must have been like in the 50s, when Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, lived in our neighborhood. All this just from the chance discovery of an almost-full box of personalized stationery.

I wanted to stencil apple-red lines on the paper so that I can use the journal for my notes and writing, but in the end I opted for the quicker method of printing them out on my computer. I won't have the tactile pleasure of writing on stenciled lines, but the rest of the experience of using my own little book should be a joy. I bound all of the pages, in one big signature (the flaw to fix next time), with a stitch-in-the-ditch method that I'm sure has a better name.

My blog assistant, who opted out of preschool today, helped me find some red things to pose the journal with, including his own shirt and maya*made's stenciled elephant.

Adventures in Bookmaking

First off, a question of metaphor. Why is it that the things you love doing can literally make you sick? Opening old books and breathing in their history at the October Friends of the Library book sale. Collecting fallen leaves. Walking sodden mushroom trails. Admiring the concentric circles of a newly mown hay bale. Savoring a bowl of hot oatmeal (with cow's milk) on a crisp morning. I love these fall activities, but they inspire an inflammatory response in my body. Somehow I have to figure out a way to help my body go along with what my heart needs.

OK, pity party is now over.

This fall I have been making books. A year or so ago I bought a beautiful bookmaking kit from painter/printmaker/book maker/all-around swell gal Erin Zamrzla (aka Etsy seller Erinzam). (Check out this gallery of her work at Poppytalk Handmade.)

My work schedule was crazy last year, so the kit got put away and was lost for a while. In a partial clean-up of my office this summer, I finally found the kit again, and put it together with the awls I bought from Books By Hand.

Erinzam's kit teaches simple Japanese stab-binding techniques, and it's a very gentle introduction to the meditative art of constructing a book. (I love the equation of paper + sewing = construction.) The kit included papers that Erin had cut from an old DIY manual, which opened my eyes to the myriad sources of found paper around me. I would show you the small book I made from the kit, but my son immediately took off with it and loved it up and added his own designs. It's now being re-flattened under a tall stack of heavy textbooks.

For the simple book above, I used indigo Japanese chiyogami for the front and back covers (note how beautifully the chrysanthemum-like flowers coordinate with Resurrection Fern's crocheted covered stone!) and unwaxed, unbleached linen thread, also from Books By Hand, for the binding. The inside pages are stationery from a 1987 Venice Simplon Orient Express trip, a find at the Friends of the Library book sale. I have some ideas for what I want to fill it with, and they make me silly-happy just thinking about them.

I can't conclude my adventures in novice bookmaking without a few more links in this already linky post to my inspirations: poet/walking buddy/maker extrordinaire Quince and Quire, who is on hiatus from her own bookmaking adventures, and paper cutter/photographer/maker extrordinaire Smoothpebble, who is a book maker and inspirer. Like Erin, they are all-around swell gals. Not to be too hokey, but the love of books binds us--as well as so many of my blogging friends--together.