Ayako Hatta's Works

I am so proud, Ayako Hatta is one of my bookmaking students. We meet once a week for only an hour during our lunch break. The three of them Ayako, Kumi and Dennis started handmade books from scratch. Being a quilter and stitcher I can't help but incorporate embroidery and quilting into my books. Dennis was the first to ask if I could show him how to do embroidery. I showed them the basic stitches such as blanket stitch, cross stitch, stem stitch and French knots.

We have been together for over a year and to see what they can make now is amazing. They are all creative in their own way. Ayako created these two wedding journals for her sister's wedding. She embroided their initials on each of the journals and surrounded the initials with embroidery designs. After that, she bound them both into journals using stab stitch technique.

Here is Ayako adminring her own creative work. She is so pleased of how they turned out.

The closed up view of both journals. The cloth she used came from Reverse Art Truck in Ringwood, Melbourne.

Ayako's intention is to get each of the Bride and Groom's family and friends to sign each journal. Ayako thanked everyone in the group who had given both verbal and physical help such as stitching the leather corners and drilling the holes. She said that these journals were really a group effort, but of course it was totally Ayako's original idea. Congratulations Ayako, you made me proud...!

Journal make in Book Frame

When I started bookmaking I didn't realize that they are many ways of making books. My first book was made using a single sheet of A4 paper. The next book was a concertina book using discarded cardboard for covers. When I started teaching (free of charge) my colleagues, I had to acquire more techniques and skills. Luckily, I am an all-rounded craft person. I can sew, stitch, embroider, weave, knit. I can always teach them something they have not learned.

To keep up with new skills and challenges is very motivating for me. Of course I know my limitation, I don't go into skills that need carpentry or mechanical mechanisms. The project I just learned recently would have been very hard to do in the traditional way, but because I am only making a small journal the technique is more than adequate for what I am doing.

I agree it does look pretty complicated at first glance. This is a book frame using for sewing book pages together. The traditional version of it is made of timber and steel bolts, but this is a simple version (my version) of a book frame. It is made out of a hard cover book with the window cut out of the cover. The book title is Great Women of the 21st Century. Good book to use for this project. You don't know how excited I was to discover this technique from a library book. It's much easier than I thought it would be. I leapt in and started this great project using my very own handmade book frame. The result is as you can see below!

Here is what I made using the above frame. It's a journal for all occations or as gift. I have a feeling it's going to be a gift for one of my friends at Christmas. The cover is black leather printed over with graffity type prining. I have used two old fashion clasps for the closure. If you click on the picture to enlarge you will see the clasps better.

And this is how it looks when it is opened. I made an envelope type of cover so if you have dockets, photos, show tickets etc., you can keep them safely inside when the cover is closed. I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Japanese Journal

This is my first book I ever made. The style is called Accordion binding. The cover paper was from Japanese book box. I cut it up to size and stitched and glue on the the signatures (inside pages). The buttons are hand painted from Japan.

This is the back cover of the book above.