Books and Plant fibre

These books are some mock ups I made for a class of school students who have two hours to learn some bookbinding. They have each been given four canvas boards for their covers. I'll probably go with the album binding with the oriental stitch, since it took me almost two hours to make the other one and that's not counting painting the card. It's quite a nice binding though sewn sections into a concertina then straps through the stitches to hold it all together.


This week I've been cooking up lots of fibre for my class at the weekend. I was also helping Mike prepare the vege patch for planting so I cooked up some couch grass and I thought I'd try these globe artichoke heads which had been drying on the stems for months, they never got to a stage where they looked edible. The pulp feels Ok now that it's cooked but we'll have to wait until the weekend to see how the paper turns out. Apart from the couch I've cooked up asparagus stems (I'd been freezing them since spring, each time we had asparagus for dinner I'd throw the woody ends into a bag in the freezer), strelitzia leaves and stems which had been retting for nearly a year, dried tussock grass and I've chopped up all the ginger lily I had in the garden but need to find some more to fill the pot. This afternoon I also cooked up some Philodrendon bracts as pictured below, they need more cooking tomorrow, they are great in baskets so should be good in paper too.