My local art group had our annual retreat and enjoyed a wonderful weekend. One of our members that had moved to Wisconsin over three years ago came this year so it made the retreat extra special. Mainly, we worked on our altered book journals.

Luckily, we have a beautiful place to go each year, the Kiwanis Lodge at Little Bitterroot Lake in Marion, Montana.

We had gorgeous weather this year and it wasn’t smoky yet. The following week was really smoky from wildfires in the northwest US and Canada.

We worked on our altered books and Paula (left) showed us how to do a traditional book binding. There were a lot of steps and I had never done a book binding like this. It wasn’t particularly difficult, just a bit fiddly. For anyone who is an expert at this process, please ignore the fact that I don’t know all the correct terms for each of the processes/parts of the binding.

We used the cover of our books and took all the “guts” out. We had to make signatures to fit the size of the book out of the pages that we had already made. You mark the signatures and put holes to stitch through. You also need a piece of fabric with a marked piece of cardstock matching the signature holes. The cardstock is glued to the fabric with PVA glue.

This is my book, the photo on the left is that stack of five signatures (groups of pages) that have their holes punched. The middle photo shows the signatures and the top header thingee (forgotten the name but it’s at the top left of the signature pile) and my tools. The right photo shows my marked cardstock glued to the fabric where the signatures will be attached.

I got so involved with the process that I forgot to take photos of all the steps. This is Paula’s book after she has her signatures stitched in place and one side is glued down to the cover. The striped pieces are her headers.

Here’s a photo of Louise’s book in progress.

Once you have the signatures glued down to the covers, you need to use “end papers” to cover the inside of the book cover. Paula used different pieces of fabric and then used a portrait she had drawn/painted as the end cover on the front inside cover.

Here’s Paula’s front cover after she got it all together. I am not sure if she is adding more to the cover or not.

This is Sally’s book, she hasn’t glued down the cover piece yet but thinks she will be using various eco printed pieces to fill her book. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of Louise’s book as she was still working on the inner pages.

And here’s my book. I was thinking about doing some surface embroidery on the leaves and pine cones but I would have to put holes through the cover. This would detract from my inside end paper. So I haven’t quite decided yet. Because this post would be a bit long, I will show you the insides of the books on my next post. It was really satisfying to get this book put together after working on various aspects of it for a year.

And my annual sunset photo.