Hop Vine Books

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?):

three Hop Vine booksHop Vine books

 

 

 

 

new Hop Vine booksThe 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.

woad-dyed Hop Vine with cream colored paperscream colored papersI 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.

woad-dyed Hop Vine mid-diamond cutIn the second woad-dyed book, the papers on the inside of the covers are blue.

blue papersThus 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.

madder-pink Hop Vine book

madder-pink Hop Vine with pink papersWith 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.