heylucy

Pamphlet Tutorial .pdf

How is that for the most boring post title ever? After much cursing of Word and Adobe Acrobat, and finally just giving in and downloading a little free .pdf maker, I present the TUTORIAL. I'll even try to add it to the left sidebar, so you can find it anytime. The title got all tweaked in the conversion process, but I'm done fooling with it for now. Now I'm just thinking about what sort of book to show you how to make next. I'll try to come up with something in the next week or so.

Yesterday I went to Trader Joe's, my favorite store in the world, and they had these great new bags for only $1.99. Just one more reason to love the Joe. Strangely, someone is selling one on eBay for a lot more than that. Why? I really hope no one is suckered into buying it. I do wish they had shown a picture of the other side as well, it has a rooster on it! Adorable!

Update: Okay, I just re-read that auction, they're actually selling 6 bags, but it's still more than $1.99 each. And also, I added a link to the .pdf file to the sidebar, right over there <----.

How to Make a Pamphlet

As promised, here is a little tutorial for you. I'll do my best to put it in .pdf format later this week, so you can easily download and print it.

Tools for Bookbinding:

You don’t really need much to bind your own books; however there are a few tools that will make the process easier. Start out with the bare minimum, and invest in some other fun gadgets as you progress if you find that you really enjoy making books!

For a pamphlet you’ll need:

• Cardstock or other heavy paper for a cover
• 3-4 Sheets of Text-weight paper for the pages
• Something to cut your cover and pages to size – if you don’t have a paper cutter you can use a craft knife and cutting mat or even just a pair of scissors.
• A ruler – preferably metal    
• A small hole-punch or an awl
• A towel    
• Some sort of fiber to sew your pages together. Heavy linen thread is standard for bookbinding, but you can get really creative here. I like using hemp cord for a rustic look, and ribbons are always pretty and you have such a variety to choose from. Yarn or embroidery floss would also work, but be careful that whatever you choose should be strong enough to withstand some wear and tear.
• A tapestry needle to sew it all together
• A bone folder is a nice-to-have item, and they’re not expensive at all, but you can get away without one for this project.

1. Decide the finished size for your pamphlet. Cut out your cover, making it the height you want x twice the width. Cut out your pages. The dimensions should be 1/8 of an inch shorter x ¼ inch narrower than your cover.

In bookbinding, the interior pages are arranged into signatures. A signature is a group of pages all folded together. In a pamphlet, you work with just one signature (although I’ll show how to make a 2-signature pamphlet once we get through the regular single signature version). A signature shouldn’t be more than 3-5 pages, depending on the weight of the paper you use. When you start folding more pages than that together the front edges of the middle pages stick out further than the outer pages. Even with fewer pages, this will happen to some degree. You can even this out with a paper cutter, if you don’t like it. I like the handcrafted look of this when it’s just a few pages, but if there are too many pages, it starts to look messy and not so nice. Also, having too many pages adds bulk, so your book won’t close properly, which is also not nice.

2. Fold your cover sheet and pages in half, one by one. Here’s where a bone folder comes in handy. If you are really accurate and careful, use a ruler and the bone folder to score the center of each sheet and it will fold over so nicely. Once the sheet is folded, use the bone folder to really burnish the crease so it’s nice and smooth.

Did you know that paper has a grain, much like fabric? You’ll always get a neater fold when your fold is with the grain rather than across it. It’s more noticeable with heavier weight papers, but see if you can feel a difference. Take a sheet of paper and bend it cross-wise. Don’t crease it, just sort of let it spring back and forth between your fingers and thumb. Now try lengthwise. One direction will have more give and the other will be more springy. Could you tell which way the sheet will fold better? The grain on most types of paper runs lengthwise, and you’ll get a nicer fold if you use the paper in that direction. Don’t worry, though, if you need to fold it crosswise to get the size you need, just use a bone folder and you’ll still get a nice fold.

3. Stack your pages together and stack them on top of the cover. The cover is slightly larger, so carefully center the pages, with the center folds all matching up to prepare to punch three holes for sewing. Make a mark in the very center, and then make two more marks an equal distance on either side of the center mark. The top and bottom marks should be about ¾ to 1 inch from the top and bottom edges.

4. Place your book on top of a folded towel, if you’re going to be using an awl, or on a cutting mat if you’re using a hole punch. To make a sturdy book, don’t make the holes any bigger than the fiber you’re using to sew it all together with. For example, if I were going to use linen thread, I’d probably stick with a very small awl. For hemp cord, I usually use the second from the smallest size on my screw punch. Keeping everything lined up, punch or poke away at each of the three marks.

5.You’re almost done, and this is the easy part! Cut a length of whatever fiber you’ve chosen to use. You’ll need twice the distance between the top and bottom holes, plus enough to tie (you can do a bow or a knot, whatever you’d like). Thread your tapestry needle and start sewing:

a. Go into the middle hole from the outside to the inside, leaving a tail of a few inches.

b. Come out through the top hole.

c. Go back into the bottom hole.

d. Come back out through the middle hole. Arrange the thread so that the tails are on either side of the thread running between the top and bottom holes. Pull it snugly, but carefully, so that it’s flat, but doesn’t tear through the holes and tie the ends in a square knot (right over left, left over right). Now you can tie a bow, add dangly beads, or just trim it short.

And you just made yourself a book! Now have some fun and make some more. Cut the cover an inch or two wider and fold it over to make a flap closure. Sew on a button and ribbon to tie your book shut, or cut the flap into a point and cut a slit in the front cover to tuck it in. Cut the cover a couple inches longer, and fold it up to create a pocket on the inside or outside. Use grommets to close up the pocket edges, or stitch them up on your sewing machine. Here I punched holes and tied it with a ribbon. There are so many things you can do to make your book special.

If you decide to make a larger book, you may want to punch 5 or 7 holes, rather than just 3. Any odd number will work. Just start at the center hole as before, and then come out the hole directly above it, back in through the hole above that and down through the hole under the middle hole. You can also sew your book together in the opposite direction, starting from the middle hole on the inside of the book, and that way your tied off ends will be on the inside.

If you want more pages, here are a couple ways to do a two signature pamphlet. The first is done by cutting the cover a couple inches wider and then folding first in half, with the right sides together, and then folding it back about an inch from the center fold on both sides. Then you just have to tuck each signature into each fold and stitch. For the second option, you'll really want a bone folder. Cut the cover about 1/4 inch wider than your finished book, depending on how heavy the paper you are using for your pages is. Measure from each edge what you want the finished width to be and carefully score at these two points. It's a little tricker to sew everything together, but definitely do-able. My picture of that didn't come out so well, I'll try to post that one later.

So there is just about all you need to know to bind your own pamphlets. I'd love to see what you come up with, please be sure to either leave a comment on this post or send me an e-mail when you make something!  And please feel free to ask me any questions if something isn't clear.

UPDATE: Welcome everyone from Whipup! Please say hello and let me know if you found this tutorial useful. If there is more interest, I'd love to do some more advanced bookbinding tutorials in the future. Also, I should have the .pdf version of this posted later this afternoon, so you'll easily be able to download and print this out for reference. And come back and let me know when you've made a book, I love seeing what other people come up with, this is just a jumping off point, and I bet there will be lots of fun versions out there to see! Thanks :o)

Rest in Peace, Little Honker

We lost one of our geese sometime last night. When I went out this morning to feed them, only two came running up the driveway to meet me. They are always all together, so I knew something had to be wrong. I got the husband up and we looked all over, but couldn't find the missing one, or any sign of a struggle. After a half hour or so, I looked by the fallen branch and saw its pretty little body cornered underneath. We still don't know what happened, there were no marks on its body, no broken bones that we could see. I wonder if it was chased by something that literally scared it to death. Bear usually keeps watch over the yard, but we didn't hear anything unusual last night. I feel so bad for the poor little thing, it must have been so frightened. The remaining two seem fine, although they were sticking pretty close to me while I was outside this morning. I think we're going to have to find a way to lock them up at night. They like to float in their pool at night, but we may just have to put them in a pen instead. Silly birds, they're so cute, but still so young and not too bright. When I go outside, if I sit quietly, they lay down at my feet and go to sleep. I have to take a picture, it's just the sweetest thing.

I finished up the quilt top and bottom this weekend, ta-da! I can't wait to get started on the quilting. I've got some wool batting, so I think it's going to be nice and fluffy. I've never quilted with wool before. I think I'll try to get it basted together tonight so I can start stitching away. Click on the picture to see it full-sized!

The pamphlet bookbinding tutorial is on it's way, hopefully tomorrow. I had planned to take some pictures this morning, but didn't have time after the goose quest. I made a few little pamphlet style books yesterday, they're really cute and so easy to do! 

picking up the needles again

Where did everybody go? I don't get tons of comments, but it's just been crickets chirping this week. I hope you are all okay out there.

Along with the quilt I'm working on for the nephew (who will be arriving in October), I'm knitting a cute little sweater. Coincidentally, it matches the quilt quite nicely. I actually tried making this little guy a long time ago, but was frustrated by an error in the pattern or in my gauge, I'm not sure which. Let's just blame it on the pattern, shall we? I found some green yarn to replace the light blue. Last night, after sewing up my last quilt block, I settled into bed with my laptop and a movie, a bowl of popcorn (light butter, so my hands wouldn't get greasy) and knitted away. Petey joined me, and although the movie was only so-so, it was quite a nice way to spend the evening, I highly recommend it.

And just because I'm sure everyone has been wondering, here's a little geese update. They're a couple months old now, and happily living outside. We gave them an old dog house, but they seem to prefer to sleep in the weeds, which they have also done a fine job of mowing down. They've grown on me a bit, they are quite cute and are learning to stand up for themselves against the chickens, who think that the geese feed must be much better than their own and are always eating it. When they get fed up with the chickens they snap and grab at tail feathers. That seems to keep the chickens in line.

a sort of commonplace book

This is a book I made for myself a few years ago, but haven't been using. It's an old book that was falling apart, so I took out its guts and used some really lovely printmaking paper for the new signatures. I bound it with some red silk ribbon and added some cherry-like beads and leaf shaped beads to the ends of the ribbon.

Lately, whenever I have a really great idea for something to create or a recipe to try, or a really great quote I want to remember, or I hear about a book or musician I want to check out, I write it down on a post it. The result is that I have a lot of post its floating around and getting lost. So into the book they will go. I don't know why I kept forgetting to use my pretty little book, but it's back now. It's not so much a journal, I think it's more like a commonplace book. I've filled it with sketches and ideas and notes to myself, pictures for inspiration, ticket stubs, all kinds of things. While looking through it this morning, I found a few ideas that I wanted to try out, but forgot about. It's great to have this repository for all these thoughts and ideas. It should clear up some brain space, which is sometimes in short supply around here :o). How do you keep track of all your inpirations and ideas?    

I loved looking at the Mood boards for the Decor8/Amy Butler contest recently. I think I need to dedicate a few pages for such a thing as I work on my living room.

I've got a stack of the same really great French printmaking paper and a couple other old, old books, so I'll be making a couple of similar books for the shop this week. I thought I'd also post a tutorial for how to make your own little pamphlet-style book, which is a great size for a travel journal or maybe a special scrapbook gift. Would anyone be interested in such a thing?

one block

One block down, 3 more to go. This is so fun working with these bright colors. I want to stay home from work and play with them some more, but I better not. It will just have to wait until tonight. I think I'm going to like this little quilt, but I won't know for sure until all the blocks are together. I plan on hand quilting with bright yellow floss, two or maybe 3 strands. I want it to really show up. This is good, stress relieving therapy as we've gotten a couple quotes for the tree. Apparently, when you have to use large cranes and other heavy equipment it costs thousands and thousands of dollars. Even more thousands than the original many thousands we thought. I better go check under the couch cushions for some spare change. And I know it's not going to make me rich or anything, but if you could click one of those ads over to the left, it might just help a little bit. If you do that, I'll keep the posts coming all week long! Woo-hoo!

craft blog

Once upon a time this was a blog about making stuff. Let's bring the creativity back, shall we?  Remember how I had big plans to install a clothesline? Well, I actually did it and have been using it the past few weeks. I just really love it. It's just lovely to go out on a sunny Saturday morning and hang up my freshly washed clothes. I'm not sure how nice it will be in the Winter, but I still plan on trying. Here are not my clothes, but a selection of pretty fabrics, many of which are soon to be a quilt for a nephew who is on the way. I'm pretty excited to get started on this one, my craft room was overtaken by goslings for a few weeks, but they are happily living outside now and I have my very messy space back. For the quilt, I'm using Denyse Schmidt's What a Bunch of Squares pattern (I think it's slightly different than the one on her site), and lots of bright, graphic prints, like the numbers fabric on the left, and the green with black printing in the middle. The solid blue that you can just see towards the left will be used for the outside of each block. I hope it works. Her quilts are usually more solid, so I hope it's not too busy. I plan on working on it all week, so I should have more pictures soon.

And here's a little something I did a while ago. I bought this cute vintage table cloth on etsy. I love it, but the outlines around the daisy flowers were really faded, so I decided to fill them back in with a little backstitching. I added a cute red border and plain linen back, and viola! A pretty pillow! I like it on my rocking chair, but it will probably spend most of the time in the living room on one of the wing-back chairs, once I recover them with some linen I picked up a few weeks ago for $2 a yard. That's no typo people, two dollars! I thought it was $4 when I took it to the cutting table, but it was on clearance, and another 50% off. Score!

 

title-free, multi-subject posting

I thought I'd share our fallen tree, although pictures can't really convey just how massive this thing is. First of all, here is the branch that fell:

The diameter of the branch is about 2 1/2 feet. When I stand next to it, it's almost knee-high. In the second picture you can see a bit of our 6 foot high fence on the left, which helps to illustrate the scale.

Here is the poor, sad, giant tree:

Apparantly it's not 300 years old as we originally thought, it's probably closer to 400 years. A couple of the tree guys that have come to give us quotes have stood, mouths gaping, staring up at it, trying to figure out how they're going to get it down. It should be fun and involve lots of heavy equipment and cranes and things! They tell us that the trunk alone will yield 8-10 cords of wood. Poor tree, you made it so many hundreds of years, I wish you could have made it the next 50 or so of my lifetime.

Here is my fashion tip for today: When purchasing $10 fake Crocs from Target, it's always good if they match your pajamas, so when you go out at six a.m. to let the darn chickens out, you look good for the neighbors. You might think that no one will see you at six a.m., but you are probably very, very wrong about that fact. I may have bed-head at that hour, but at least I have cute shoes and pajamas.

Speaking of letting the chickens out, I decided to expand my repetoire of egg recipes and add two really great cookbooks to my collection. First is The Farmstead Egg Cookbook, by Terry Golson and second is simply Eggs, by Michel Roux.  I've enjoyed Terry's hen cam for a long time. When I'm at work and missing my girls, I can just pop on over for a quick chicken fix. What a great little cookbook she's written. The photos are just lovely, and I will probably make nearly every recipe in there. So far we've made a couple different frittatas, and the shirred egg with spinach is one of my new favorite breakfasts. Doesn't it look so pretty with some good, toasted olive bread? Yummy! And the Carbonara is so very easy and delicious.

We've been sharing eggs with neighbors and co-workers, and it's so funny how people think about eggs. One of the husband's co-workers wasn't too sure about taking some of our eggs, worried that maybe they weren't 'safe'. Wow. Eggs that I collect every day, from chickens who are free to roam and scratch and take dust baths and eat good quality feed as well as treats like lettuce, grapes and apples versus eggs transported after who knows how long (eggs can be labled 'very fresh' when they make it to the store in a week, and 'fresh' after 2 or 3 weeks, I believe), from chickens crammed 6 to a cage, unable to stretch their wings, in a factory-like building. The choice seems obvious to me.

The other book, Eggs, is also really beautiful and has recipes not only for chicken eggs, but also quail, duck and goose eggs. Those will come in handy when the geese start laying! All the basics are covered, in great detail. It's a good reminder to re-learn how long to boil an egg or make really creamy scrambled eggs. I think I might even be brave enough to try poaching some eggs again, although I've never been able to do that successfully.

A lot of the recipes are a little more fussy and exotic, and even though I might never make them, they inspire simpler versions. One thing I did learn, while attempting to make the Spanish Tortilla, is that Mexican chorizo and Spanish chorizo are not at all the same thing. At all. Well, I suppose they are both meat products, but that is where the similarity ends. Instead of nice chunks of spicy sausage, I ended up with a soupy, greasy mess. We just threw some cheese and avocado on it and pretended that was the plan all along. It was a pretty tasty mistake :o)

de-stress

I haven't bothered with writing anything here for awhile, because if I did it would just be a whiny, oh woe is me kind of a post, and who really wants to read about that? I will only say that in the last couple weeks a 300 year old tree lost a very big section and will have to be cut down for a large sum of money, and my old reliable Honda friend needs to be put out to pasture, which meant buying a new car for a large sum of money. It also meant spending four hours in the company of car salesmen who I completely detest. Wow, they were a bunch of jerks.

Let's remember a happier time, shall we? This is me and my adorable niece in the chicken coop, during my sabbatical. Forgive the lack of makeup and hair styling, I was on vacation.  She helped me gather eggs every day while they were here. I miss my little helper! She also declared Bear her best friend. I'm sure he feels the same. We had so much fun at Disneyland and I had the honor of buying her first pair of mouse ears.

I'll be back again soon, I still have egg recipes to share, cute cat pictures, gosling updates and even some stuff I made. This is still a blog about making stuff, after all. If you need something to cheer you up, Dreamkiller, by these guys and this song really worked for me. Go listen!