Book Arts and Photography

Bookbinding tutorial: pamphlet stich

Early in the semester, you will learn how to sew a book using the pamphlet stitch. The single signature book offers creative options for a book. Books that have spines less than 5 inches in length, you might want to use a three hole sewing pattern. Written instructions for a three hole pamphlet stitch can be seen at this link. In this video, a five hole sewing pattern is demonstrated. A book from a signature is often called a chapbook. In commercial printing job, this type of binding is called saddle stitch. This video illustrates a hand stapler is used in saddle stitching. Whatever you wish to call this type of book, the pamphlet stitch is used in many creative book projects. This pamphlet book gallery has some student examples.

In this demonstration an 18/3 thread was used. You can learn some information about bookbinding threads in this blog post.

Tortillas La Iguana

What started out as an experiment in making paper from corn husks, has turned into a small print for the HWT Wayzgoose 2014 on Sunday, November 8th. Instead of forming regular sheets of paper from the corn husk pulp, we poured the pulp into a variety of round shapes. When the paper dried it resembled tortillas so much that I had to create a new brand, Tortillas La Iguana! Thanks to Tracy Honn from the Silver Buckle Press for suggesting how I should print the plate on different sizes of paper. The classroom’s Vandercook 219 has a set of rollers for inking that lift up enough to not touch the paper as the platen cylinder rolls over during the printing run. Our friends at Boxcar Press made the plates for this run. Below is short video on the printing steps. At the press is Julie Marie Copenhagen.

Getting set for an evening at MMoCA

On November 13th, 2014, a few students and I will be working on a quick book project as part of the “Under the Influence” program at 6 pm. One of the book structures we will explore is the Turkish Map Fold. Thanks to Sona Pastel-Daneshgar for demonstrating in the video.

Short video for casing-in your book block.

The video has no audio beside the ambient sound of ruffled paper. I can add some comments if you need to hear what we did. Otherwise, watch carefully as Sophie cases in her book block. We did not add any mull or book clock for the hinge. The cloth often levels out the bumps created by the tapes on the inside of the cover. Sophie cut out a few layers of the board to nest the tapes inside of the boards. Once the adhesive dried, we opened the book to show you how it looks. I will add a new video once she pastes down an end sheet to cover the board and hinge. Stay turned. Listen carefully for sound from the shop. You might hear the board sheer and the ruffling of waste paper

Short review of sewing on tapes demo.

Watch an edited video of the demo from class. It is not a complete taping, but it does cover the first part of the lesson on sewing on tapes.

Short tips video posted on coptic binding

The key points for making the coptic binding easier, are in this video. You have seen the other videos which illustrate how to start and finish the binding. This one simply show four key tips that make the binding session go smoother. You watch a larger version of this video by clicking on the YouTube logo on the bottom right of the video window.

Round sheets of corn husks paper

My current project is making round sheets of paper from corn husks. When the sheets dry they look very much like tortillas de maize or corn tortillas. Soon more images of the project will be shared.