October 2018 NORBAG Workshop - Leather Bound Tiny Book

Kathy Warren attended the Newport Paper and Book Arts Festival (NPBAF) this year and took a class making a leather bound tiny book that can also be wearable art. Now Kathy has taught us to make one of those books and use jewelry findings to turn it into a necklace (or booklace if you prefer). Kathy made kits for each of us that included everything from the signatures through the beads and jewelry findings. 

This isn’t one of those little jewelry pieces that just looks like a book. Although it is only 1 ½” by 2” in size, it is a casebound book with four signatures, a leather spine, stitching on the cover and a leather and bead closure. We added a jump ring, a thong and closures to make it into a necklace.

Kathy brought several examples of what we could make,
 some as necklaces and others as simply tiny books.

Kathy brought excellent written instructions as well as diagrams
 for sewing patterns and how to affix the jump rings to the books.

We started by covering our tiny little boards. You can see by the pictures how small these books are and also the variety of decorative paper that Kathy supplied.

As with all book covers, we first cut the decorative papers
 to the appropriate size and then below, you can see the gluing.

We clipped the corners (above) and then glue and fold over the edges (below).

We ended up with two nicely covered panels (this is the inside of the cover).

Using the larger black leather (the smaller strip of black leather
 will become the closure) we glued the edges (below).

We then adhered the leather to the cover leaving an open space for the spine. 
Using a jig and awl, we pierced the cover for the decorative stitching
 (not only decorative, but it also ensured that the leather stayed in place).

This picture shows the sewing of the decorative stitches. 
The photo below shows the first side being completed. 
The stitching was mirrored on the opposite side of the cover.

The signatures were stitched through the leather and tied off.

Using the tiniest of beads, we made the closure. The smallest of tabs was glued
 and then sewn to the back of the book and then slit to make an opening for the bead.

Here are a number of photos of our books in progress. Each picture reinforces how small these lovely little books are.

This artist used different thread colors.

We had a great day. Wish all of you were there. Rather than a picture of the Exchange Books on a big table, they can be seen on Flickr after the 17th of October. Just tap this url:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redwoods_book_arts/albums