As we head into the summer (allegedly, I given that the thermometer on the car was reading 16 degrees Celsius when I drove home today), our annual holiday is approaching, so it's time to create this year's holiday journal. I loved last year's format: miniature memory joggers in a lovely little chunky, satisfying book.
I definitely want to do something similar this year. The book covers last year, you may remember, came from a commercial 'ethnic' style notebook that my little one had turned out. There was one other notebook from that purge that was pretty but it had a fixed spine and wasn't anywhere near thick enough for a week of stitching, so I've decided to make use of two pieces of stitching I created in a workshop on a style of sashiko stitching called hitomezashi back in July 2019 (see the blog post here) and then turned into a pair of book covers lined with an oddment of Japanese silk.
I got the boards finished fairly quickly after the initial workshop but then, like many things, it languished. I wasn't sure whether I wanted fabric or paper pages and I had no immediate use for it as a book. It was obviously waiting to become the 2024 holiday journal! It's the 'right' colours for a start - we're going to Cornwall this year and Cornwall is always heavenly shades of blue to me.
It will have felt pages like last year's, this time in shades of sea, sky and sand.
However, as the covers are flat boards, it will need to be bound differently. I'm going to add guards to the spine edge of the pages and this will enable me to Coptic bind it like the Johnson's Dictionary prop I made for Blackadder the Third last year (below). Coptic binding will also enable it to open up and lay flat, which will be perfect for the embroidery. If I have one reservation about last year's journal, it's that the pages don't open quite far enough to allow you to see everything easily.
Making holes in the edges of the boards might be a bit tricky, but I'm planning to do all the stitching and assembling of the pages first. Judging by how long it took me to finish last year's, I'll have more than enough time to work out how exactly I'm going to manage it!
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