Woven and Stitched Spine Workshop

For the last two Saturdays I’ve been attending a workshop put on by the CBBAG – Southwestern Chapter in London, ON. Our instructor, Jan Taylor started us off with a buttonhole book structure (purple cover). This fun book doesn’t require any gluing and when finished the pages lie completely flat. We used a waxed linen thread for the buttonhole stitching that appears on the outside of the spine and it really helped to hold the stitches in place. This exposed stitching could be decorated with beads, buttons or even provide a frame work for some weaving – endless possibilities. The next book (green cover) was a Hedi Kyle structure using Tyvek tapes and St. Armand papers. To add some colour we experimented with Inktense Watercolor Pencils on the Tyvek tapes which created quite a nice, almost parchment looking effect. Next we sewed the tapes into a text block made up of nine signatures. I changed up the cover and trimmed it to include a tab that slipped under the decorative spine paper.

First up the following week Jan demonstrated a variation on the buttonhole book making the cover out of more substantial matte board. We all brought in different material to cover the boards, I used some of my marbled paper. After trimming the boards and covering material we pasted it together and once dried we sewed in the sections as per our first model. Next we tackled another Hedi Kyle structure that features an interlocking spine (yellow and blue cover). The cover is made up of two sheets that have been folded and cut in a way that the resulting tabs interlock and a tape (we used Tyvek) could be threaded between them to connect them and make a spine. The text block was an accordion fold that had corresponding cuts made into it which were then also was threaded to the cover. I got quite confused prepping the covers but with encouragement from Jan it all started to make sense and as many in the class quoted “all will be revealed” and in the end it was!