We have a finish. It took until the last day of August, but the Springboard Project book is not only moved on, but officially completed. I finished stitching my name on the front, which although it was a pain at the time, I'm really pleased with.
Then I sandwiched a piece of batting inside the back cover and ladder stitched it closed. I decided to finish the top and bottom edges with blanket stitch to hide the layer of wadding and added a line of running stitch all the way round.
Then it was time to do the same with the front. Doing the back cover was fine. I was working it out as I went along, deciding to use blanket stitch top and bottom rather than just the running stitch I've got on the rest of the pages and enjoying the way it turned out. But doing the same with the front was just boring. And irritating because when I finished I discovered that the contents page is somehow not sitting flat. I'm not sure whether it's the stitching over the cover or the original stitching to the cover fabric, but it's buckled slightly. Not enough for me to want to unpick it all and find out where the issue is: certainly not at the moment, anyway, but just enough to niggle.
Then the binding. I did toy briefly with French Link Stitch, but it's quite a loose binding and I wanted something tighter, so I stuck with a Coptic binding. I soon discovered it's trickier than binding paper signatures because there are no folds, and instead of stitching in and out of the signature, I had to run the needle through the folded over edges of the pages. All the pages being different sizes and thicknesses didn't help either and after having half bound it and then decided that the crochet cotton looked thin and mean, I took it all out and restarted again in a thicker perle. It's still not quite what I wanted but I don't think I could actually do it with a much thicker thread.
So we have a finish. It is bound, and opens flat, which is what I wanted, but the finish is somehow not quite as decorative as I hoped. And instead of feeling pleased about the finish I'm just relieved it's another job off the list.
However, it does mean the decks are clear (clearer...?) for September/October's Move It On Project which will be revealed next week.
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