Big Bend in Double Coptic Binding
I now have a small stack of blank books filled with mostly nice paper—and they are all of them blank. I’ve worked on understanding the various structures, the mechanics of constructing a book, paper grain, paper weights and a whole host of new vocabulary and techniques.
Using those books has been another matter.
Earlier this year, my husband and I took a long anticipated trip to Big Bend. We had been there several times but it had been years since our last trip. I took a pad of very cheap water color paper, a small water color set, some markers and was determined to spend some time drawing and painting.
I did several marker drawings–harder than I thought to see value and convert it into gray tones. After several days i was brave enough to add water color.
I then had a small stack of drawings/paintings. What to do with them? None were good enough to frame but they were a nice memento of the trip. A few postcards were added to the stack.
A map of Big Bend and a brochure from the National Parks were used as the covers and I bound it using a double needle coptic stitch. Unfortunately I had thought myself more expert in book structure than I am and the first attempt was not good. I took it apart and tried again–this time with some light colored book cloth as the spine—the front cover stitches were loose and I didn’t like the color.
So I took it apart again—made more book cloth and tried again.
I’m much happier with this. I will add some written words and perhaps some more water color to some of the drawings.
Sylvia Weir Art 
Boy, you’ve been busy with the books! I’m hoping it is something I can do as I recover from the back surgery as I have set aside what is needed for three different book structures. Won’t jump RIGHT into it, partly because the studio is on the second floor and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to face that long staircase!