New Photo Albums

Hello All Blog Friends! Two posts in two days - goodness, what an extraordinary event!  I just wanted to continue the little story that was begun by yesterday's post.

Yesterday I showed you four sets of book covers, that I had been working on and which were just about ready to use.

Today I worked veeeery hard and completed the binding of two photo albums, using two of those pairs of covers:

Photo album covered in Cath Kidston floral paper

The book measures 11.75" x 8.74" (approx A4 size).  It has a Japanese style stab-stitch binding, in bright pink waxed linen thread.  The bound edge and inside of the covers is an ivory-white Canford art paper.

There are 15 pages of 300gsm Canford card, in Snow White.  I also added a card spacer to each page, to allow room for photographs to be added.

The book will take two 6" x 4" photos per page, either in portrait or landscape format.

Large photo album in blue mini-spot Moda cotton and white silk bookcloth.

Like the Cath Kidston album, the binding is a Japanese style stab-stitch, this time in ivory linen thread.  The bound edge has a wrapped overlay of white Dupion silk with a frayed-edge detail on the front cover.
There are 15 pages of Snow White Canford card, with a spacer between each page to allow for the photos.

This album will also hold two 6" x 4" photos per page, with plenty of room to add a written description of each photo.

I was pretty tired after all the cutting, trimming, punching and hole-making - not to mention the fiddly binding through the silk-edged covers of the blue album.  With paper-covered boards, it makes sense to make punched holes, of the same size as the binding holes in the pages.  The binding looks neat with these holes and it's not difficult to push the needle through the same hole over and over again, as is necessary for this type of binding. 

However, with the fabric covers, it would look ugly if punched holes were used and the fabric would begin to fray and go tatty round the edges of the holes.  Sometimes I punch the holes before I add the edging fabric - then as I smooth down the fabric when sticking, little dimples show where the punched-out holes are and I can push my needle through the fabric quite easily. 

Today I didn't remember to do this, so I had to make the holes with an awl instead, meaning that they were really quite small.  I use a fairly thin, quilter's basting needle for this type of binding.  They're good because they are quite fine, but strong, with an eye that is straight at the sides, rather than bulging as on some types of needle.  The bulging-eyed needles are not good for small holes, as they get trapped and break. 

It's not easy though, to push the needle through a small hole several times over, as the threads from the various stitches make the hole smaller and smaller.  I have a clever little circle of rubbery material, that helps me to grip and pull the needle (it's called a "needle grabber"!), but I still had sore fingers and felt very tired, after all the work to keep the small holes lined up and coax the needle through the thread-filled gaps!

Still, the end result was well worth the effort, as the holes don't show and the binding is neat and clean.  I'm very pleased with both these books.  They're in my etsy shop for sale now! 

Taking a day off tomorrow, as J's school is closed for a teacher training day (always on the same Friday in each year), and also on Monday.  So J. gets a four-day weekend, which will do him good, after being away on a busy activity weekend last Friday to Sunday.  However, he won't be able to sleep in tomorrow - we are going out just before eight am, for another trip to Oxford.  Watch out for a post about our day!