Japanese Style Books

I want to make some trial Japanese style books. True Japanese books with their stab binding use Japanese paper which is very flimsy - hence my purchases on Wednesday this week. The paper is used folded. You can see a fold in the two samples on the left. The free ends are bound into the spine of the book leaving a 'pouch' formed of the folded paper. In making a sample book with this paper, you can't give it to someone to use as a journal because the use of a pencil or biro would wreck the paper. It is actually intended for wood-block and other printing or perhaps calligraphy using special ink.  I decided that I wanted to have some content on the pages and what better than calladium leaves? Watercolour or pastels is not feasible. Oil pastels might be, I thought.  So I printed some calladium leaves at the appropriate size on to thick paper, cut them out and made stencils, then used these with oil pastels. A sample is at the top and I do not like it at all so I tried paintstix (lower sample) and decided that was fine. Another problem which I had not envisaged is that the paper just tears with a craft knife. So I have cut the sample pages with scissors but will have to do better as the edges are a little ragged. 

The paper of the samples is a roll of Chinese watercolour paper I brought back from Kuala Lumpur and am using because Michael does not want it.

Jobs to do then are to find a good method of cutting the paper to size, prepare some pages with stencils and bind them. My tutor brought in two Japanese books for me to see this week. One was bound in paper and the other in silk donsu!!! There's a thing to aim for!

The threading is progressing and I am approaching the 20% done mark. The next thing on the Megado is going to be a  good length of Tencel on 4 shafts - broken twill, easy to warp up and weave! I have realised that the last three Megado projects have been too many to the inch!! The Vale of Evesham was 90 epi, Convergence was 60epi, the current one is 100 epi. I think I will ask Linda Scurr if she has some spare handspun which I can weave at 6 epi!

Books covered in Silk

I have finished one book with a silk cover. It is a very fine fabric (60 epi) and liable to fray, even though I ironed fusible lining to it. So the corners of the corner had a smidgin of PVA applied which makes the book look tidy and should hold the silk in place. The paper is watercolour paper. You can just see the blue marbled end-papers that Michael made.

I have another identical book which is half finished but will not be able to do much more until the next book-binding class. It was half-term this week.

What I must concentrate on is the endpapers for the Omar Khayyam book. The problem is gluing the endpapers on to a backing sheet. They get all wrinkled. I have been reading Ikegami's 'Japanese Bookbinding' and came across a different technique for glueing two sheets of paper together for end-papers. I will try that at the weekend. It needs a visit to the cellar which means going out into the snow!

It started to snow at 1100 hours and already it is  piling up. The forecast is for this to continue until 1800 hours. By which time I shall be snowed in!

Back to the Bookbinding Class

I missed the first bookbinding class of the session due to snow but made it yesterday.  I stripped off the board covers from Omar Khayyam, discussed with Angela Sutton, the tutor, what weight of paper I needed to print the endpapers on I have decided to print out the end-papers on both printers. I suspect that printing on the Inkjet will not work if I use waterbased paste on the back whereas the Laserjet, though not so good a printer, has wax-based inks.

I also sewed 2 lots of paper to make two notebooks. I am using Tesco's finest watercolour paper and have 96 pages - 24 sheets folded once)-in each book. I will cover one, possibly both, in woven silk. I must also look out some nice end-papers for the m. I have just bought some more of Fibrecrafts  lovely swirly paper and hope I can use that.

Yesterday I visited Michael in hospital, clutching a plastic bag of 60/2 silk samples to see what he thought of my ideas for a fan reed weaving - see No Snow! and Fan Reeds. The very first weaving  with the fan reed was various green cottons while the second was brown/green 60/2 silk. I decided to be loud and vulgar this time. The warp will be white, scarlet and orange with a yellow weft. The weaving on a fan reed looks best with cycling through three colours in the 'stripes'. The royal blue is for the 'edges'. I am going to outline each stripe with 3 threads of this colour  so I should have dark blue wiggles down the cloth. I am putting on 6 yds of warp. The scarlet and yellow were acid-dyed by me. Nice to find a use for them.

I have invested in a roller temple for the Megado. It comes from Fireside Looms in the States. My widest temple is ferocious and, while most of the holes wash out, I don't like it. So the Megado is sitting with 6 yards of 90/2 silk warp still on it and not tied up since I removed the first 5 yards ten days ago. The roller temple is due in ten days by which time the room will have its redecoration completed. I want to weave a length to enter for the Association Exhibition which means finishing by March 1st. The draft is ready and the colours selected so 12 hours weaving will see it completed.

I would like to start on the fan reed warp today but I must finish cleaning up  garage and start shifting stuff into it ready for Monday's invasion by the workmen.

The Last Book

I have completed the fourth and last book for this term. This is very large, slightly bigger than A4  which I have not bound before. I think it is a mistake. The endpapers do not line up right and it is difficult to deal with because of the size. It probably was not thick enough.  The fabric is white and yellow striped silk this time; the other three were various weights of cotton. The silk was stamped with a sort of seaweed pattern in groups of three in blue, then overstamped occasionally in gold paint. In two places, one on each face of the book, I laid on a rectangle of copper foil and stamped on top of that. The greyish colour is just that, a light coating of silver paint.

The end papers were cut from a sheet of dark blue paper decorated with gold which I bought from Fibrecrafts. They have a large collection of different papers and, last time I was there, I was allowed into the stock room. This was one of the finds. There is not have much left but it would do nicely as a paper on the outside of a book. I will try to get some more.

I still have one piece of fabric big enough for an A4 book but am not happy about this. The reason why No 4 book was bigger than A4 is that I folded several different types of handmade and fancy paper together and these turned out to be bigger than A4. I did not trim or cut the edges as I like the deckle effect and, in any case, some of the sheets would tear rather than cut tidily.

The dark blue jacket is coming along, the body is complete and the roll collar is attached and completed. The sleeves are cut out and had lining fused to them. I remembered at 5 o'clock this morning that I had forgotten about the shoulder pads and fell out of bed to order some from Jaycotts as well as some other haberdashery I need. We had a great shop on the main street which sold everything you could possible think of in that line but they closed up and became a webmail shop for fabrics only. The nearest one now is in the middle of Worcester  which has discouraging car parking facilities.

On Saturday at the Guild meeting, I collected my 12/2 cotton yarn for weaving up Michael's enamels. It is going to resemble a Biblical breastplate when it is finished!

Which brings on to my philosophical musings. Some weavers I know have one draft which they happily weave for ever. Others put on a different draft/yarn every time. I am not quite in the second class but approaching it.  I do wonder if it would be better to stick to one yarn/draft for a bit, say, 3 years. One might get very good at it and yet, I am sure I would  be bored.  I really must stick longer to one thing. Which reminds me that we have three acrylic boxes in the sitting room and looking at them, I realise that the 'seedheads' one in Annuals VI would make a lovely book cover. I wish now I had not been so hasty in taking off the remnants of the warp.

Bookbinding

This is Book 4 bound in light blue bookcloth with two rectangles of fabric appliqued to front and back.
I have been experimenting with taking photos of books. Previously my books were much the same front and back, so a photo could be taken with a book lying on a desk. The recent books have been different back and front and I have been experimenting. I have been reading (re-reading, reading over and over again) '500 Handmade books' selected by Steve Miller (Lark Books, 2008, ISBN 1-57990-877-2). This was one of the books bought at the MTF Symposium a few weeks ago. There is at least one photo of every book. And one way of photographing is as shown here. Another way is to make two identical books and take a photo of the two together. But that is going too far.
The last book has its cover made and is, at this moment, being pressed in the cellar workshop. So far it looks good.


Yesterday was the Kennet Valley Guild Christmas party to which I took Michael. He asked what would be happening as we drove there. 'A lot of eating and gossiping and several exhibitions' I replied which turned out to be no exaggeration. A lovely collection of Christmas baubles and another one of completed projects based on yarn or fibre dyed by the maker. Stunning scarves in silk and in wool using a chained and space dyed warp with acid dyes as well as socks knitted with space dyed yarn. There were some staggering jumpers and a rug in handspun in natural dyes by one Mary Knipple. Her colours have not a hint of sludge about them, clear fresh yellows and reds. I could not get over the colours and asked Mary about her work. 'I always use alum as a mordant, nothing else' was the reply. And there was an awful lot of lovely food.

I have been good this morning, found all the Christmas presents, wrapped them up in nice paper and worked out what I have left to get. Not a lot. I do have a habit of buying nice things during the year and found one or two things I had forgotten. On the downside, I know that I bought some lovely fabric and cannot find it. Cue for funny story.
P:- 'I have lost that nice Swiss fabric I bought'
M:- 'How?'

I was quite indignant about that. 'How?'. 'How do I know?'

Now I shall get on with my jacket.