Paper & Precision

I am starting a couple of new projects. The one is the screen printing one I've chatted about. Unfortunately I can't really discuss this one much as it's for an exhibition, but the planning and preparation is interesting. I will be sticking some BFK Rives onto birch ply. In order to have a deckled edge and a narrow bit of wood showing, I need to ensure that I get the size exactly right and must allow for the paper stretching when damp. I learnt this test in bookbinding.

This is also great for the inside cover lining of a book, especially if the lining can't be trimmed after glueing. If you are working with some of the Nepalese tissue papers this can stretch quite a lot.

1) Draw a perfect 10cm square on board. Measure the diagonals to be sure that you are accurate.

2) Check the grain of the paper you will be working on and draw out a 10cm square on it with an arrow to indicate grain direction. Also draw an arrow on the paper next to the square so that afterwards you can be sure which way it stretched. Check the diagonals and cut out the square.

3) Make your glue. I used half wood glue and half wheat starch glue for glueing thickish paper onto heavy board or wood. If the paper is really thin then your glue will be pure wheatstarch and it could stretch a lot (because its thin, nnot because of the glue. Thinner the paper, thinner the glue!). 

4) Glue the square onto the drawn square on the board and see how much it has stretched.Work it out as a percentage and apply that to the piece of paper you want to glue. If its 10% bigger, obviously you would cut it 10% smaller ...or minuscually thereabouts (Come on pedants, this will be accurate enough!)

Mine stretched .5mm in one direction only i.e. .5%, so it was negligible. But if it stretches 3mm cut your paper 3% smaller to allow for this.

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The Silk Route

Here it is!

The cover is the brown silk from the 100 mathematicians. It was lovely to be able to use all the little test scraps of tea-dyes silk and all those trials from the 100 mathematicians where the pen weight was too light. And of course my photographic record of how to do photgraphic screening. There are five sections bound with tapes made from the Theo fabric, and stitched with linen thread.

Each chapter heading has an opening page - here is a hand-made bobbin lace doiley dyed in tea, with lettering around it. It's the chapter about fabric and fabric dyeing. The left page is a trial bit of actual artwork from the 100 Mathematicians.

 I was asked to give an embroiderer's workshop on lettering and I did this experiment on one of my silk bits, so it made a nice intro. page for another chapter. On the left is the actual laser print tracing used for Theo's Wheel to make the photographic screen.

The stitches are each about 1mm and the letters are 6mm high. Where does she get the time you may ask?
Well, I embroidered it at A&E while waiting for my husband to be seen for an injury.
When the book comes back I'll try to remember to take a couple more photos of the inside to show you some of the more interesting pages. (We'll skip the boring saga)
The End.

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Binding the The Silk Route

It's really good to keep records of what materials and methods are used - for your own reference and also to look reasonably intelligent when people say "What sort of ink did you use?"
Throughout the screening process I took photos and made notes as it's a fantastic record for next time (ha-ha). I love making books and here was ready-made content to use instead of making blank books.

The Silk Route in the making:

I wanted a silk cover using the trial runs of the 100 Greatest Mathematicians.
I decided to bind over tapes which works well for sections of different thicknesses because of the photos and fabric samples. (Sorry I only have photos of the cover construction, but the book has an open decorated spine which is tea-dyed).

To make the silk-over-cardboard padded but not spongey, I glued felt to the covers with wood glue after cutting and piercing the holes for the binding.

 The fabric is first stitched in the middle, then you alternate with ties on either side of it. Each tie is long enough to do two stitches across and to be tied in a criss-cross. I used ordinary sewing thread which I doubled.
Once the long sides are taut, start in the middle of the short sides and continue until only the corners are left.

The corners are "pulled in" and stitched. Here is a rather fuzzy close-up, but I think you can figure it out.
I made narrow tapes out of the khaki fabric from Theo's Wheel and first stitched the sections together over the tapes, then joined the tapes to the cover by stitching them onto it on the inside. Fiddly, but it worked..

This photo from way-back-when will show what an exposed spine looks like (top book). In this book the tapes were threaded into the cover. (Apologies, I never took a photo of The Silk Route spine at the time and the book is in Sunderland on display right now.) Also the stitching is crossed and on The Silk Route, I did parallel stitches.
Once the covers were stitched to the sections, I glued a nice heavy piece of Khadi paper as a lining to cover the threads and the tapes. Khadi is quite forgiving of lumps and bumps and so it looks fine.
You'll get a glimpse of the inside tomorrow.

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