Photo Album - Finished

Today I was making the cover for my new photoalbum. I bought a strong folder for documents and cut out two rectangles slightly bigger than the album (the allowance for the top, bottom and one side). On the other hand, the spine was cut slightly narrower than necessary.

I laid the pieces on the wadding and cut it along, without drawing anything. And there's the problem - for such thick fabrics, leave rather a cm between the spine and the board. I left about four milimeters, which appeared to be very few.

I put the wadding on a fabric and quilted it with a stipple pattern. Even at this step it shrinked a bit.

I sewed on a satin ribbon to the middle, for the fastening.

Then I glued the boards and the spine to the wadding. I let it dry a bit before I went on. 

I glued a piece of thin canvas to the inner side of the spine and to the album binding as well. It makes the binding more tough and protected from undoing.

Then I could glue on the allowances at the book cover. I tried to pull quite hard so that the fabric laid flat on the paper.

As the last step, I glued the outer sheets of the album to the inner side of the cover. It must dry very well and it's great if one can put some weight on the book at this phase.

I haven't made slits at blank sheets yet. For every photo I'll have, I must place it on the paper, make dots with a pencil about half a centimeter from the corners, put a protective board inside and cut the slits with an office knife.

Photo Album - Binding

I want to make a photo album.I don't like white paper very much - I bought the paper that's used at the post office for the packages.It's cheap and nice and tough.

I folded the paper and cut the size with these two layers. The size of one layer is photo plus one cm at the sides and one cm at the binding.

I drew a line with a sharp tool I use for dressmaking. It's easy to make a fold at such line. I ironed the sheets and pressed them several days under a pile of books.

 I took three pieces of twill band, measured the distances on the book and drew marks at each sheet. I pricked the holes with a pin.

The outer sheets are single. In the end I sewed one outer sheet and one common sheet together, so this photo is not really real :)When I sewed first two rows, I tied the two ends together in a knot and went on with the longer one.

 I glued the little overlap to the outer sheet, cut the twill band and glued it on too.

Diary Completed

You can see that the bands have been cut to be smaller than the paper strip and glued to the diary. This is important step. If you stick them loosy the diary will look strange.

Now, I should have glued a mull but I used a Canava instead. It worked quite well:-)

And now to the decoration. I intended to make something like a 3D stamp from millboard and make a squeeze on the paper. In fact it didn't work. I had to think up something else. I glued a strong cord to the millboard for the outer folder. By the way, the pieces I cut out of it were two rectangles in the size of the block I'd made, just some 2 mm bigger in three directions - up, right and down, as I don't add at the backbone. And one a bit narrower than the width of the whole block.

This part's not documented well:-) I cut a rectangle out of a yellow sheet of paper and spread glue on it. I laid the backbone part to the center and sticked Canava on it. The other two rectangles were put a few milimeters aside. I cut the corners of the yellow paper and folded it to the outer folder.

Then cutting the corners more and folding carefully the other side.

Prepared folder looks nice:-)

I took metal scissors to help the letters form themselves. Stroking and tender care:-)

The cord made a nice embossment. I regret not having managed to use the millboard method but this worked better.

Now I put a paper inside the border sheet and spread the glue all over the front page. I removed the blank sheet. Then I sticked it to the outer folder, keeping the 2 mm margin.

This is quite important part and has a big impact on the look of the diary. Now it is almost finished.

I put new blank sheets inside the border papers and let the diary squeeze to secure that the whole diary will be well glued.

Voilá:-)

Diary Sewing

A few days ago I payed a course of making diaries (books). I decided to use this knowledge to make a present for the birthday of a friend of mine. Wow, this will be a pretty long post again, but diaries have so many steps..
I tore edges of A4 sheets of paper to look "more handmade" :-D I folded them in the middle to create folders - collection of several folded papers.

A printed sheet was inserted into every folder. I printed photos of my friend on my printer. The paper I had was thin and in the result the picture was visible on the wrong side as well. It made an unrepeatable impression. Brilliant.

I had two extra sheets that would serve as border paper. I took two folders and sticked each border paper to one with glue and a strip of paper. The border paper's on the right here.

When I had all the folders complete I laid a twill band on it in regular distances and made a line along their edges, and an additional one at each side.

I pricked the paper with a needle in these marked points. This way they'll be visible from the outside as well as from the inside.

Now sewing the folders together. It's just something like front stitch. You have to start from the outside in.

At the end tuck the pieces of ribbon through the loops. The wide part of the band you sticked the board paper to the folder should be down now (the narrow will be inside the diary). Fasten the cord around the strips leaving a small tail of the cord hanging.

I put the folder to an edge of my table so that I could use my needle easily. When I sewn back I lead the thread around these strips and fastened at the end again.

Here I made a knot with the tail of the cord. This is done only at the first two folders.

At the third folder I made a knot attaching the thread to the previous row. This is the knot that's made from here until the end. Don't forget to attach the cord on every side and keep fastening.

When you have all the folders sewn it should look somehow like this. Wipe the sweat off your forehead and say to yourself that this is not finish but you don't have any time and energy left for the rest:-)

But this was fortunately the harder part of the work.