Margaret Beech and Friends

One of the purposes of creating this blog was to offer a peek at our workshops for our non-local members; photos or slide shows can give you a good sense of what we created and how we did it. What they cannot do is show you the enthusiasm of Margaret, her energetic teaching style, her great love of teaching the book arts, or the warm response of the participants. But, I'll give it a try.

Margaret has been a longtime member of NORBAG and participates in the book exchange each month, from England! Many members came just to visit with her once again.

Margaret is a calligrapher and we spent the morning practicing the Dotty Alphabet. Members have learned to bring desk lamps from home—the room is too dark for detailed work. 

The alphabet itself is charming and easy to learn. We used Micron pens and practiced our ascenders and descenders on straight and curved lines. 

The afternoon was spent constructing a book. This sample was made by Margaret and celebrates her granddaughter's 4th birthday. The four pages lift up revealing a photo from each of her four young years.

We started the construction by cutting out the background pages. We learned to speed up the cutting and folding using templates. If there is a shortcut, Margaret will invent it.

Each of the pages has a piece of art and decorative backing glued onto the center of these shaped pages.

The pages are then assembled and held together with T-pins and a clip. Margaret leaves the T-pins in until she is ready to pull the thread through the holes. This way the pins hold the papers together while stitching. Brilliant!

The completed books were all beautiful and I'm sure we'll see some of these in future exchanges. 

THANK YOU MARGARET!