week four in our final class, we cased in our hard cover books. after the boards were cut we measured the distance between the spine piece and the cover boards in order to glue them into the book cloth.
then we covered our boards with paper and fitted the text blocks inside. applying glue to the endpapers, we closed the cover briefly and opened it again to burnish the endpapers to the inside covers.
at the end of class, we exchanged single-sheet books and built a slipcase for them.
Minnesota Center for Book Arts week three this is the text block we prepared for our hard cover or case bound book. to do this we folded paper into signatures, practiced the french twist with kettle stitch on a sewing card, punched holes in our signatures, and sewed the signatures together. then we glued the spine and covered it with a mull and japanese paper.
the first night we did a few books that require little skill and experience, but have a lot of variations. although they are simple, with the right materials they can be elegant.
This fall, I made a broadside of the Benedictine Values for the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University. These broadsides were sent out to incoming students with their acceptance letters. I made the paper from abaca fibers with inclusions of Big Bluestem grasses from the Arboretum at St. John's and printed the broadsides in the Book Arts Studio at St. Ben's.