Assignment 2 : Accordion Book Construction

 Today I am working on the construction of my accordion book.

I finished printing but didn't get any progress photos of my second printing session as I was in the zone and just needed to get it done efficiently. I was printing the characters and the will o' the wisps. I printed some wisps into the forest and then the foreground to show that they are leading the journey for the characters. I played around with placement for a while and dediced on placements that led the eye to the next page. This also supported my placement of the characters as I wanted to back of the characters just peeking onto the page before their full appearance as a little teaser of what is to come. 

To print the characters I taped the two pages together that I wanted them to cross between, put the taped pages under the acetate where I wanted the characters to print. Then I taped down the tabs in the desired placement, pulled the paper out from underneath and untaped them. I then printed each page individually with a sliver of the character on the first page and then the rest of the character on the next page. I need to do it this way to account for where the fold in the paper would be as well as enough space to glue the pages together without covering what I had just printed out of alignment. 

I then moved onto contructing the book. As I had printed four copies of my book to account for misprints and mistakes, I used my misprinted copie (which was always the first one I printed on to avoid mess ups on my final 2 copies) to test the best method of glueing and folding. I started by glueing first and then folding but that led to some missalignments with the length of each page and the folding was clunky. I then tried folding first and then glueing but that led to a mess of glue on the front of the book ruining my prints slightly. 

I ended up using a mix of the two. I first measured where every fold would be and scored that using an awl but didn' actually fold anything yet. I then glued my pages overlapping an inch because my paper was quite thick and less of an overlap was leading to too much weight and pressure being put on the glue when I was unfolding and standing up my practice versions. I then used multiple cutting mats, a square and my long ruler to glue together my pages in a long line making sure that everything was as straight as physically possible. I let each joint dry under several large books to weigh down the glue and prevent lifting. 

I started folding from page one following my awl scores easily and was able to really accurately fold each page because of the meticulous planning prior to gluing. This method worked much better than either of my test books. 

Once folded I began working on the cover of the book, starting with cutting my book board to size with a 2.5 mm excess on all four sides. I used a square and my ruler to measure and triple checked my measurements as if the cover had too many discrepencies then it would be easily noticable immediately upon looking at and touching the book. 

I used an exacto knife to cut through the book board which was slow going and needed quite a bit of strength but ultimately led to a more accurate cut than any other cutting method I could think of. I find guillotines easy to cut with but they tend to lack millimetre accuracy as things shift when cutting. 

I had already decided on and bought a dark moody material to ellicit fog in the forest. I hadn't decided on how to apply my title and where I wanted my name on the book. 

I decided at this point that I didn't want to write on the cover of the book as that wouldn't fit the aesthetic of my book. I wanted to have the title be subtle and not prescribing of each persons experience of reading the book. I wanted the title to give readers an open ended experience which they could make their own. I settled on 'Wanderer' as the meaning is to 'travel aimlessing', 'a person who travels from place to place without any clear aim or purpose', or 'a person who roams about without a fixed route or destination; a wanderer who reasoned that they could never be lost, as they didn't care where they were going.' This is the experience I want a child or adult to experience when reading my book. There is not end goal despite the magical elk at the end. Your eyes can wander the pages looking from tree to tree, wisp to wisp but the book does not require a destination which is supported by the form of an accordian book without text within, as it can be looked at from left to right, right to left, or cyclicly. A child can sit and point out the many hidden wisps they find without having to finish the book or start at the start. 

Embroidery materials

I decided to embroider the cover with a darker blue thread to not only match the colour of the wisps but also to make the title not super obvious and make it more apart of the book rather than it's own thing. I bought a few different colours of embroidery thread as I wasn't sure which colour would suit the cover better without the book at the store, but also so that if I decided I would use more than one colour I had options. 

Choosing embroidery colour

To decide which colour worked best I converted my image of the threads into black and white to see the tonal range and which one would still be seen at all on the fabric for the cover. I didn't want it so dark it became impossible to read but also not so light that it became too obvious and prescriptive.

Testing values of embroidery thread

I then went online and searched for different ways of lettering with embroidery and settled on the split stitch as it carried a sense of ornate and historical lettering which matched the font I chose, being Bollatica. I chose a font that was ornate and suited a fantasy story but that also was still legible and not overly complicated (as I had never embroidered before). 

I reversed my text and traced with paper towel and a sharpie. I pinned backing fabric, the paper towel and my fabric together in the upper middle section of my cover after measuring where I wanted the title to be placed. I placed it in this location as it matches where most of the visual information is inside the book with the forest also taking up the top half of the pages. 

I started stitching and tried to make the covers as similar as possile which was tricky but I think they worked out close enough to be happy with.

Final cover of 'Wanderer'

I then carefully glued the fabric to the book board and the cut the corners of the fabrid to allow for clean folds when glueing the excess to the back of the book board. I glued and folded the edges over using a boning tool for smoothing out the fabric slowly and carefully to avoid air pockets. I think the only issue was one covers had a slight air pocket where the glue didn't adhere to the back of the embroidered section as well as I had hoped, but the second cover didn't have that issue as I added extra glue to that section. 

The only other issue was avoiding getting glue on the front of the fabric which I only messed up once on the back of one of the books. I used a fine sandpaper to remove any glue that had got anywhere else but that one patch of glue was too much to fix at that point. I would definitely work on a larger surface next time to avoid the fabric touching any glue that had got on my table. I would have two stations set up, a seperate gluing and fabric application stations. But space at the time did not allow for that and I am dissapointed that I didn't notice there was wet glue on the table at the time. Besides that the rest of the fabric application went well and to plan. It was tricky to apply the fabric before the glue had tried too much so a few times I had to lift the fabric from one edge and reapply the glue as the fabric and book board were absorbing it too quickly, but if I initially applied too much glue then it seeped through the fabric and got on the other side.

I then adhered the first and last pages of my book to the covered book board. This took a lot of accuracy as if they were slightly missaligned then the book covers would be wonky to the book and each other. I think I did a fairly decent job of getting them as closely aligned as possible allowing for neat and tidy looking books that are uniform to each other. I made sure that the deckled edges were properly glued to the cover to avoid lifting. I quite like the look of the deckled edges as well as the idea that children are the target audience and so they don't have to feel scared to touch the book and ruin perfect edges as they are alreay roughed up and imperfect. 

After all covers and backs were applied I placed them under heavy book and used my husbands workout weights to sit on top to weigh them down and make sure the glue adheres to the covers without lifting as well as to avoid any warping while the glue dried. This worked well to create very flat books with not warping or lifting anywhere.