My Weekender Bag - bottom

This is the bottom panel for the bag. I cut strips of the two leathers, wove them together, and used two-sided fusible interfacing to put fabric on the other side to hold it all together. It came out a little more 'racing stripe' then I might have liked, but it's growing on me.

Purple Leftovers

I really like these books that use up my extra bits of leather. Not just because I save on supplies, but I just think they look really cool with the different colours and stitching. I didn't have enough purple to make a full half cover, so instead I used it as the closing strap in the middle, and to wrap around the front to cover the open pages (because I didn't have enough yellow for that either!).

View from the back.
Marbled paper inside to set off the colours.

A Leftovers Cover

Many months ago I was browsing around on Etsy and found some Rhonda's books that looked like they were made of two separate pieces of leather. That seemed like a great way to do two-tone books, or get rid of some old leather. So last week when I was again actively looking to use up some scraps I remembered my brilliant plan and did a bit of reverse engineering and adapting to come up with this binding.

Of course after I was done I realized that I probably could have looked at her blog for more information about it, and there was tonnes. They're called Crossed-Structure Bindings, and were invented by Carmencho Arregui, who also has a very informative website.

Nevertheless, I'm happy with what I came up with on my own. I think it works better for my purposes, since the proper version actually would have used more, rather than less, leather. But now that I've found more things to play with and adapt, it should be fun to have all that extra information!


ps. I missed Canada Day due to some computer problems, and of course, fireworks! But here's something for a little late celebration. Happy July Long!

My new favourite binding

I'm making a whole bunch of books to get ready for the Beads Paper Water Gift Fair this November, not to mention the Hotel Sask (they'll need more for Christmas too!). I want to get as many nice, simple, books as I can first as basic stock before I get caught up in the stranger, time-consuming ones. On top of that, I'm making myself use up all the supplies I have (as much as possible) before I get anything new. So, leather books first, then on to Coptic and the like to get rid of all the paper I have.

I came up with this way of binding some of the softcover leather books. I will likely make a few of these because the ribbon (and that can easily be suede or something else, to get a different look) both decorates the spine and closes the book in one easy step, and there's very little hole-punching/sewing because there are only three lines of it! But don't worry, the paper still stays in place very well.

A Little Purple Luxury

I am once again low on every type of supply but decorative paper, so I made a fancy and luxurious book using the one thing I do have at the moment. This one took a very long time to put togetherer. The back stitching is all in silk thread, and then there's all the embossed detail under the leather. I'm really loving that technique. I think it adds so much to the cover, and while it can be time consuming, is really not very difficult. I did two layers to get the effect I wanted, the lattice pattern (to match the embroidery) and the damask on top, to make sure the edges stood out.

On the inside I used a very rich textured purple (same type of paper as the red in The Tell-Tale Heart) that was very annoying to rip and I made a big mess of my sheet. I hope there's enough for another project, but I really did a number on it. The other paper is a really nice Japanese one I just picked up. I wanted something a little over-the-top that just pops whenever you open the book.

This one is for sale on Etsy.

The Tell-Tale Heart - and they lived happily ever after. The End.

All right folks, tell all your rich, American Lit loving friends. It's finally, totally, absolutely finished! It's destined for the Hotel Sask next week, but I'm putting it up on Etsy for the time being, so hurry and buy it right away!

I'm very ridiculously pleased with the cover. (This is a scan before I attached it so that you can see the whole thing). It's made of some nice thin recycled leather (bet this furniture scrap never anticipated its future life), embroidered with silk in the same shape as the inside title page, cut-out to exposed the binding, and then the front and back have plenty of raised designs under the leather to make it interesting.

I got the idea for the raised designs from this tutorial on Karleigh Jae's blog. I just took it a little further. I made it really really complicated with the amount of detail, the positive and negative shapes (some are embossed, some in relief), and then I put a few shapes on a second layer to top it all off.

This is the spine with open binding. Well, open binding is maybe not the right term, because I actually hid the binding. Originally I was going to have it exposed, which is why I made holes in the leather. However, I decided that the book was simply too small, it would be extremely crowded, and just a detail too much, so I hid it instead.

Another view of the cover. The 'E. A. Poe' was a bit of a last minute addition.

The inside pages. Looks great when they're all together!


The front and back endpages, in that terrific paper I found in blood-red that looks like it had veins running through it. Perfect! I really enjoyed doing these cut outs because I've gotten quite good at them, and because they are glued down I could add so much extra detail with some pieces floating unattached to the larger paper.

Another detail, and the one that caused me the most grief. I've been trying to find some nice, thin, black paper for a couple of months now, ever since I started, and nothing! Then I was at work (well, volunteering actually) at Ten Thousand Villages when I found a gift bag in black paper made of recycled silk. It was printed on, but there was enough blank spots in between to let me make a few little shapes and add them between the pages. Most of them are smaller than this one. It was really difficult to cut the paper and almost impossible to see what I was doing.


The binding I did with the same silk thread as the cover embroidery. In keeping with the feel of the entire book it's uneven and is in a different pattern in each signature.

The End.

My life this week was all hockey. And a book.

Somewhere in between watching the Olympics non-stop this week I decided to try something I've had on my mind for some time now. I ordered some silk thread off ebay a couple weeks ago and it arrived so I could begin! So I embroidered leather to make a book cover. I really wanted to wait until the silk got here because it's simply so much richer than cotton. It look terrific next to the leather, what a great contrast! I'm glad I used the good stuff, because it took freaking ages.


I love Moroccan design, so I choose a pattern I like, made it more complicated (because that's what I do, just because I'm me and like making things difficult) and then did it in different colours while I was at it. I found a nice Moroccan-themed colour swatch that made choosing the colours very simple. The embroidery itself is not terribly complicated, just rope stitch for the outline and lazy daisy inside. Just painstaking and well, painful. I couldn't find my thimble and sewing through leather is tough! It's also kind of weird because every single pinprick will leave a mark, and too many stitches close together will simple punch big hole in it. Which is why there's no filling stitch, just pattern. Which will make things interesting if I don more of these because I'll need to figure out how to fill in the spaces without, well, filling in the spaces.

After the spine was done I wanted the covers to have some attention as well, but not more embroidery, so I did a pattern under the leather, simply cutting out a thin piece of cardboard into more Moroccan shapes (a simplified version of the spine) and putting it on the binding board so that the leather took up the pattern, but subtly.


Continuing on with making the whole thing look very rich, the inside cover got a couple different papers. A richly textured handmade green to match the main thread, and a lovely neutral marbled paper that picks up all the colours. I'll admit, I did cherry pick the marbled papers from everything sent in for the paper swap because it was the only thing that matched. (By the way, I should have that all ready to go Sunday, I took the day off so that I can watch the game).

All in all, I'm fairly happy with how it all turned out. Luckily, no one can see the back of the embroidery, which got messy pretty frequently. It's hard to work on this stuff! And it didn't take many tried to figure out how many threads I needed to achieve the proper weight for the outline. If I manage to figure out an easy way to get my pattern on the leather then I'll really be rolling. Or at least creeping along a little faster, I'm trying not to think of how many hours went into this. But all in all, a successful attempt!