Nant Designs: Hillarys Blinds Country Crafts Competition- Peacock Book

The Challenge:

Using your 100cm x 100 cm piece of Country Retreat fabric and any other materials, put your creative talents to the test by making an original craft design

This competition appeared on my facebook page just at that moment I needed a new challenge and with a great choice of fabrics

I knew exactly what I wanted to create:
A coptic bound book suitable for photos or a guest book with card pages with a satin ribbon tie.

The Covers

The 'Bird Parade' is a gentle pattern depicting peacocks on a heavy weight fabric with a silky surface.

Each bird was about 30 cm high just right to make the covers for a book. I cut two rectangular panels, larger by about two centimetres all round, than the size of book I wanted to make.

The card to make the hardback cover is 3mm greyboard and each measures 33 x 22 cm. The edges were sandpapered to take off any sharp corners

The fabric was glued to the card using evenly spread PVA and allowed to dry

Each corner is folded over and stuck before the edges are glued down. There are many ways of folding up the corners to give a neat finish depending on the materials used. Scoring the fabric with a finger nail helps to make a sharp fold.

The Pages

The pages are cut from 'Seawhites' antique white card in pairs and folded. Each page needs to be about 0.5 cm smaller than the covers on the open sides but not at the spine. My book has 10 pairs of pages in 5 groups ( signatures).

This book is stitched with a coptic binding which creates a decorative spine and will lie completely flat on the table. The stitching passes through holes in the cover and through the signatures- these all need to line up. A hole making jig is card with holes pierced in it to indicate where to position the holes in each section.
For coptic binding there are two rows of holes- one for the pages and one for the holes in the covers.

The jig

signature and jig ready for piercing

The card is placed in a v shaped trough and an awl is used to pierce the holes in each signature.

piercing the holes

The covers are held with the outsides together and the holes are cut with the jig and a paper drill.

The ribbon which forms the tie has been inserted through a slit in the covers, folded over and is glued down. This will be under the lining and hidden.

Inserting the ties

The cover boards are lined with one of my own silkscreen printed papers in a co-ordinating colour ( appropriately enough -in peacock design)

The covers and pages can now be sewn together

The Coptic Binding

I have used 3mm satin ribbon for the coptic binding. I start by knotting the ribbon and stitching through one of the end holes in the 1st signature, inside to outside

Hold the cover next to the 1st signature and take over to the outside of the cover and into the corresponding hole. The ribbon then passes between the cover and the signature and back through this hole again, in the same direction, and finally back into the first signature in hole no 1

Repeat with all the holes in this signature.

At the last hole instead of returning inside the first signature after passing around the cover add the next signature of pages and sew into the first hole at this end. Emerge from the next hole.

Each signature is now chain stitched to the next and a knot is placed at the end of each row to keep it firm. More pages are added as reach row is completed.

The last page and cover are added simultaneously.
Two stitches are made through each hole in the cover before the chain stitch is made. The stitching ribbon progresses between holes inside the signature as before.