Journal Making

This is a collection of journals I have been making recently. All constructed in pretty much the same way but the spines are all made differently – 4 different techniques in all.
The spines on the top two were made using the rag rug method demonstrated by Traci Bautista in her book and on her DVD.

I really like the way these spines turn out so I wanted to try and recreate them using a different method.

All four journals have been are made from scrim that has been embellished on to cotton velvet.
One made from a rust dyed embellished piece, two from pre-coloured scrim and one from an embellished piece that was dyed then overdyed.

This is a very brief run through of how I constructed the spine on the one in the bottom left hand corner.
This one:
I dyed a piece of cotton fabric using the same dyes and methods as the covers of the book.
Some of the fabric was put to one side for the base of the spine and the rest was torn into strips and then ironed.
The strips of torn fabric are laid across the top edge of the spine base fabric with another piece of the torn fabric laid across horizontally. This piece is sewn across to hold the strips in position.
The finished first row looks like this.
The next row is laid in position at the bottom of the spine base.
You can now work out where the other rows go to get the fullness of the spine as you would like it. The spine is then attached to the inside covers of the journal.

This particular journal has been constructed using hand made paper for the signatures.

As I said at the beginning this is just a brief run through of how I put this journal together. If anyone would like the full S.P. on this technique there will be a free downloadable .pdf file on my website (Purple Missus) very shortly - as soon as I can figure out how to get it on there :)