Saturday, November 15, 2008

Whew.

Holidays are coming up and I am far too busy!! I can't imagine what it will be like as they close in on me. I'm feeling flustered lately... and drinking way too much tea and coffee. Curse it all!

On the bright side, I did manage to squeeze this little thing into my schedule today:


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for such a beautiful blog!

I, too, have just recently found the Secret Belgian binding. The tutorial I used, however, didn't specify how to attach the spine to the rest of the book, and I still don't know how to do that. Is there some (Secret) way? I notice that your spines don't seem to have any means of permanent placement. How do you do it?

Thanks very much.

Garland
garland.a.lewis@att.net

Iris said...

You're right - the spine doesn't truly attach to the rest of the book. But I find that when I sew the pages into the covers, the sewing on the covers and spine tightens significantly and locks the spine into place. I imagine if you're worried about it slipping out, you could slightly notch the edges of the spine where the sewing crosses from spine to cover. But I think it's tight enough that it will stay in place. Another advantage of the Belgian binding is that if the sewing loosens enough that the spine might slide out, you can always tighten it up again.

I'm glad you're enjoying my blog! Thanks for the comment! :)

Kiley said...

I might have different directions than you do... first I sew the text block, then as I sew the weaving pattern for the spine and cover the text block is sewn into that pattern. It attaches the spine piece to the text block...
Can anyone else visualize what I'm talking about?

Anonymous said...

Hi Iris

This is beautiful, I was just going to ask what type of binding it was then read Garlad say it was Secret Belgian binding.

Do you know of anywhere I can find a tutorial on this? I don't suppose it is in any of Keith Smiths first three books???

Best wishes

Billie

Iris said...

Hey Kiley, you do have different directions than I do. I sew the spine to the covers first, then sew the signatures to the spine/cover weaving. Hm... now I'm curious about the method you're using! :)

I originally used the tutorial found here:
http://users.stargate.net/~dearsam/bookarts/

When I want a super-durable Belgian bound book, I loop the thread around one horizontal piece of the spine/cover weaving and then go back into the same sewing station - rather than traveling down to the next station like in the tutorial.