Sketchbook: Extending Pages (M3, Chpt 9)

This chapter looked at various ways of extending a page in your sketchbook to accommodate longer or bigger pieces of work. My work for this chapter focused on three areas: a] practical page extensions; b] adding pages using a sewing machine; c] adding pages using hand sewing.

Once I had read the notes for this chapter I put them on one side and didn't refer to them again. After I had finished the work, I reviewed the chapter notes and realised I had maybe not entered into the spirit of this chapter. However I did enjoy the work.

Practical Page extensions

I started by making notes on how pages could be extended:

As I had enjoyed making printing blocks for chapter 8, I decided to use the theme of printing for this chapter. Firstly I made some very simple print blocks using cotton yarn

I made a sheet of long rubbings for my sketchbook and inserted these folding the pages across the width of the sketchbook in two opening flaps:

Then I made upwards and downwards opening flaps:

Then I made two folding sheets:

Then I moved onto a long printed piece that I folded into a concertina:

I made a folded concertina to keep some little printined tags in. I thought this was a really useful idea:

Extending pages using a sewing machine

Firstly I referred back to module 2 and gessoed up some pages from an awful novel. Then i used up some of those collage pieces I made for M3 Chapter 8 and made five pages of similar design:

I created spines to connect the pages. Then applied matt medium to glue and seal.

Then I glued on a black muslin backing. This enabled me to work with the paper on the sewing machine:

I used very few stiches to connect the pages into one long piece. I folded the spines into mountain and valley folds and machined these, then added some decorative lines to the edges of each page. I glued the work into my little sketchbook.

Hand Sewing

I fairly pretty much used the same technique for the hand sewing exercise. I used some of the rubbings from Chapter 8 to create a series of pages (using the gessoed book pages as a base). I backed these with black muslin and sealed as before. Then I used a variety of hand stitches to join the pages: