Hand Sewn Bookbinding & Calligraphy

Making beautiful lettering has been a passion of mine for a while.

Writing on fabric, paper, wedding invitations (cannot find a photo of them all for you, sigh), post-it notes, chalk boards, and anything that holds still for too long is something that I picked up about 15 yrs ago when I was learning Copperplate Calligraphy for Baltimore Album quilts. 

Wandering around CreativeBug, I ran into some super cool classes on bookbinding by Jody Alexander.

I made the above book after taking her online class on Coptic Bookbinding.

The cover is just a simple art paper in light blue that I decorated with calligraphy after the book was all finished. 

I'm using this as a notebook for some of my creative thoughts and classes I've been taking. 

One of the other classes she has covers how to make a book cloth out of fabric.  My next version will hopefully be covered with Liberty of London fabric, with any luck. 

It's been a real adventure for me in learning about paper and glues, including how to make glue from methyl cellulose power.  Hint: dumping some powder in cold water is hardly the place to start.  Can you say sticky icky goop?  Oh yes you can, it's almost Halloween after all.

I have thoughts about making some of these for give-aways since I'm addicted to making them.  You get to sew paper!  It's almost as much fun as sewing fabric.

Handmade Books: Listmaker's List of Lists

In my last post about bookbinding, I did some calligraphy on the outside cover.

I took another stab at it, pun intended, and sewed up another coptic style book based on what I learned in Jody Alexander's bookbinding class on Creativebug.

This time instead of using plain paper from the art store, I used paper from PaperSource.  I like this better than the first try and would like to make some more of these.

I'm using this book to make my to-do lists for all sorts of things.  It makes me feel better to make lists of things when it gets really busy and it seems like there is not enough time in the day to get it all done.  I found a poem about list making by Shel Silverstein that was pretty funny.  

I couldn't help but decorate it a little bit, so below is what the inside cover looks like.  I call it the Listmaker's List of Lists.  What a mouthful.


The gradient paper was made on my own personal printer from a file freely available for download at Mr. Printables.  Sweet colors.