AIR 2017 Week One, the x book

The weather was amazingly helpful, despite a day of torrential rain, thunderstorms, lightning. It let up enough for me to load the car, get to the library and safely unload, before opening up again. Then at the end of the afternoon, it repeated the performance, making things much easier than they might have been.  I did have all my materials and precious handmade books in plastic boxes carried in plastic bags,taking no risks.

Donna S, the gallery manager, made a great poster for the event

  
Here are some of my own books, the two nearest the camera being the style I taught today, as well as those two little ones further back.

 And a couple of the reference books, the one in front being my all time favorite, very well designed and presented, and cheerful, too.

And the afternoon went great.  This week I started, assuming anyone would not have done this before with what we used to called the x book until a new electronic device came out with the same name. Now, if you want to google on it, better look under book made from a single sheet.

Two people stayed the entire time, working away and leaving with their own new creations, and other people looked over their work, and at the display of books I'd put out.

On the right there is the sample I made and opened, and the student picked her favorite color for her own book, and she's numbering her pages before folding.  She ended up making two books and attaching them together, with pamphlet stitch then a fancy embroidery type of finish.

I love the total absorption here!  This lady used a stencil to design her cover, and ended with a lark's head knot and a section of an earring at the end of the string, to finish it off.  Both students learned the pamphlet stitch and did a very creditable job on it.


I had made a couple of samples (and brought bigger ones with me to work on myself, but never got the chance, a nice problem, that), and had created one with the page numbers on them.  What I did was fold and make the book, then, quick, number the pages as they came, eight in all, then open the sheet up.  This makes it much easier for a learner to understand how to do the folding at the end, so you don't end up with a locked up bunch of pages!  The page numbers are not intuitive, don't sequence the way you might think.

So, very good afternoon, and I think  the same people will come back to continue next week.  Hoping that the weather will not deter other people, too.  I was amazed to get anyone considering the elements out there.  They were so happy with their creations, and the first lady to arrive, after she'd got started, helped the next one to start, always a great thing for the instructor to see.

Next week: accordion books.  This will be great fun, and I'll unfurl the giant one we made in the library artists group a couple of years ago.