Sewn Structures book binding workshop with Rachel Hazell

As part of my holiday I got in contact with the lovely Rachel Hazell of Hazell Design's books and organised for myself and my sisters to do a workshop with her.  I've been a fan of Rachel's books since I was at University and was first introduced to book arts.  Her books are just gorgeous, I wanted to take home one of each that she on display, but i finally got myself down to just one.  A little notebook with 'Do what you love' in type on the front and a little map picture on the back.  Made with lush paper, its going to be a while before I make use of this little book for fear of going wrong!  I am also the happy owner of a mug and a cute little bag with Rachel's designs on them - mementos of my trip.

We started off with simple books that involved no sewing or glue, and could be created out of one piece of paper.  We used A4 but any size will work as long as folded correctly!  These are such inspiring little books, and Rachel's little stories of previous projects, the directions people have taken their books and her own ideas really brought the books to life.

There was a good old elevenses tea break, lunch and an afternoon tea break as well - I could of continued all day!

We made a simple 4 page book with a cover and just 3 stitches.  We used a lovely old page of sheet music for our cover.  2 pages folded and slotted in together is known as putting them in a nest. Cute.

The next batch of books involved more coordination and a bit of sewing.  We were taught the box fold (I forget its exact name - should of taken more notes!) but basically a fold for a cover that means there is a little box around the spine edges, making a nice flat surface to stitch/bind on.

The first bind looked like there were little pearls along the spine, really cute, with room to expand on this idea with thinner thread and actual little pearls.

The second was a chain stitch bind, which looked just like a chain.

The third, linked kisses.  Rather than your plain cross stitch look these kisses were made up of two bits of thread linking through each other.

The forth, the ladder stitch, funnily enough looked like a ladder!

The fifth, we went back to the 3 stitch music book, but gave it 3 nests.  This was an exercise to show us how we can easily add more nests into any book.

Because we were pretty fast, well behaved book binding apprentices we got to make a sixth book!  A bit of leeway and we could make it look how we wished with dots and dashes.

My memory of book binding is so refreshed now!  A great day, course and experience all round.  Even got to see  Edinburgh for the rest of the lovely sunny weekend and enjoy time with my sisters.

Thank you Rachel!