beginning again – day 1 – tada!

So if anyone is still awake you noticed I missed yesterday’s post, I was too busy trying to finish the DisCo project, and after many mis-starts here is the finished object

inset into the front cover is the most moldy piece of paper to make it through intact, I covered it in resin to preserve the decay then hand sewed it into the fabric covers (made from a scrap of left over upholstery fabric, the most neutral thing I could find).

As I had mentioned, it rained so much here that the whole bundle was ridden with mold, I baked and then froze the pages to try and kill as much as possible, then I varnished all the pages with multiple coats of poly. Many of the original book pages had been laminated together by the water exposure, so I sewed them shut as one page with the machine, I left all the threads just because I like the way they look, and I felt it fit the whole theme. That left me with individual pages and I knew I wanted to do a sewn binding, so then I scrabbled the order, flipped some pages upside down even, and made signatures by using little strips of binding tape, tea dyed because all I had was white.

here’s a view of a couple of inside spreads

I had originally thought that I would do a Coptic binding, but I was concerned that even with the tape the paper would be too weak to support the spine’s weight, so I decided to do an exposed spine buttonhole binding instead. Yeah! that seemed like a great IDEA, but I had never attempted one with an unsupported fabric cover, or without measuring and marking the holes, so it is pretty sub par, but has character, I made three attempts that I ripped out, before just deciding to let go of my vision of perfection and let it be what ever it was.

I am so thrilled at how this has turned out! So thrilled in fact that I have decided to use this piece as my entry for our faculty show this year. The gallery assistant Colin will be thrilled that it is small and will NOT require a team of large guys to install (although secretly I think he enjoys the challenge!). You may have noticed that I titled this post beginning again, and here is my plan…

The work isn’t due to the gallery for another month, I am so in love with this book I want to work on it more, so I propose to work everyday on the interior, solving my boring blog challenge by just posting images for you to enjoy until it leaves for the exhibit. I am just going to hang out and meditate with my scrappy little book for the next month, although I’ll be working on other stuff too! I hope you all feel this was worth the few extra days…