Thanks to a couple days off from work, I have sewn up three new books with the Hop Vine motif. Two have a woad-blue pattern weft, and one has madder-pink pattern weft.
Here are three views of the trio (can you tell I am very proud?):
The two blue ones are different in two ways. First, I cut the cloth to center the motifs differently. Second, I used a different color paper to cover the cut edges of the cloth on the boards.
The book shown below has cream-colored papers. I cut the motif to end at the edge of the taller white-outlined diamond. There are six of the taller diamonds across the cover, and only five full repeats of the squat-diamonds.
I decided to cut the cloth for the second blue book through the middle of the taller diamond motif. There are five tall-diamonds going across the book, and six full squat-diamonds instead.
In the second woad-dyed book, the papers on the inside of the covers are blue.
Thus far I only have only made one madder-pink book in this pattern. It has light salmon-pink papers and white waxed linen thread in the binding.
With this batch of books I tried a new method of pressing the covers after I glued on the papers. I was worried that the pressure from the book press was only pressing on the part of the cover where the cloth wrapped around the edges. I thought maybe the wrinkling on one of my earlier books was due to there not being enough pressure where the paper was lower than the cloth. As an experiment, I inset a thin piece of cardboard between the paper and the wax paper when I put the covers in the press. You can see the slight ridge where the cloth ends. I am not sure that I like the ridge, aesthetically, but I prefer it to wrinkles.