New Classes: Hand-made Books & Felt Intention Cloths

My autumn classes at Five Towns Adult Education are open!

First, here is Felt Applique Intention Cloths: little art quilts for your wall and also to use as an object of focus and an opening into your inner wisdom. Set an intention (it could be about your new car, your wedding, what to do with that closet down the hall) and then as you sew, magic things happen in your brain. I will tell you all about it in class, but it works. Art makes us smart. I swear. And if you just want to come to learn the really pretty design technique, that would be fab too. xo

Sign up here:

http://fivetowns.maineadulted.org/courses/searchResults?search=robinsunne&area=04856&x=27&y=8

OR

You could come over to the High School and take the Handmade Books class which is geared specifically to parents and teachers. I teach you (and we play and have fun) and then you take these cool ideas home/to class and show them to your children. It is a great way to have time with one's kids, especially if you use it as a way to watch just how creative and smart they really are. All that color. All that folding, and handling, and experimenting with paper. What a way to brainstorm wonder.

Sign up here:

http://fivetowns.maineadulted.org/courses/searchResults?search=robinsunne&area=04856&x=27&y=8

Accordion Book Hinges

Good Morning/Day/Night (wherever, whenever you are).

I am a member of the TrueNorthArts Yahoo Group and there was a question of how to make a really loooong accordion book without really loooong paper: how does one connect shorter papers without bulking up the book?

Here's the idea I had: use fabric as the hinge. Now, as I am not really sure what I am talking about, I thought I'd do it myself, photograph the steps and see what happens. Let's go.

Step One:

Cut your papers into the correct height for your book's pages. I am using Canson art paper here. A little shout out to the Canson People. Nice papers, thank you.

Step Two:

Fold the papers into the correct width for your book's pages. You might be noticing that not all of the papers are folded to the same width. I just wanted to see what would happen. Stay tuned.

Step Three:

Cut one piece of fabric for each hinge between two ends of the various accordion folds for your book. NOTE: Cut them a bit taller than the paper - we'll trim them exactly later. I used solid cotton broadcloth. Now I have cut one pale green fabric that doesn't match the paper for contrast? An artistic statement? And then I used one blue cloth that almost exactly matches the fabric to see how invisible I can make this hinge.

Step Four:

I neatened the long, vertical edges, cutting off the little fringies and unwoven threads. I did not cut the top or bottom as we will do that later.

Step Five:
I placed one fabric piece on a piece of clean paper (I cut up all of my recycled papers to make notebooks for myself and didn't have any big enough for this project.) I got out my Elmer's white glue (Hello Elmer's Products, Inc.) and squirted some (too much! - read below) on to get ready for ...
Step Six:

...where I painted the glue all over the fabric. Make sure that you get the glue evenly spread aaaall over the fabric. Pick up the gluey fabric and put it on a clean piece of paper (so that you don't get the extra brushed glue where you don't want it.)

Step Seven:

Place one end of one folded paper down, rubbing it into place.

Step Eight:

Then press the other down. Now, see how the papers are wrinkling a bit? Too much glue. I tried using less glue on the next hinge...

Step Nine:

So I tried less glue ... but it wasn't enough ... so I about doubled the amount shown here, ending up at slightly less than the pale fabric above.

Step Ten:

I put the next set of folded papers on, abutting them about as precisely as I could. But I was in a hurry and cut badly - see how they don't match at the top?With the pale fabric I cut off the extra fabric at the top and bottom with a pair of scissors, but here I used a metal straight edge and an X-Acto knife.I liked how very much easier and neater that was. Can you see in this photo that I just cut off the extra tall paper. (No one ever accused me of being a Type A personality.)

Step Eleven:

I covered each page, both sides, with some plastic wrappers that I had in my studio then laid books on top of the paper/cloth hinges. I will send off this post, go undo the stack - hoping that the wet-glue-warps might have flattened out, and post you the results. (A short advertisement here - I used my own books for the stack! Nannee, The Great Library ATC Swap and Chang E, The Lady of the Moon.)