Making books

I have made books for roleplay and the like in the past but they have been very simple things. Today I came across a swap on ATCSforall to make longstitch books and realised I had no idea what that meant.

After some investigation I discover that it is a varied technique but basically it is when you stitch together the book with long stitches down the length of the spine going in and out of the spine so the threads are visible on the outside. The picture above is nabbed from wikipedia. I do like the look of this style of book so may have a go at making some notebooks or journals this way.

I also found several blogs dedicated to bookmaking which I think I will be visiting again. My Handmade Books has a whole bunch of interesting posts including this one about longstitch. Sarah at Little paper bird has some very interesting books and is very fond of accordion books by the look of it, she lives over here and has had books in art galleries !.

There is even aboutbookbinding.com which has several free online books though as yet I havent' had time to look at them properly.

What I hadn't given much thought to was books as art which is strange as I've made art books and want to try altered books but I suppose books are so much part of my life they are like bowls or something else mundane I know they both CAN be art but I needed reminding every now and then. When you look at the stuff being made by someone like Deckle Edged Bindery on Etsy then you can start to appreciate a book can be so much more than just a rectangle that fits on a bookshelf next to other similar sized objects. Though normal books do have the advantage of being efficient to store on bookshelves and we have enough problems finding room for those we have without wishing them all into interesting shapes!

Paperfaerie makes some interesting sculptural pieces out of old books, at this point it is getting away from books you can use but never the less they were books once and that is an important part of how they look.