Well I have completed the book.

I wanted to show some pictures of the completed book. I have chosen some of my favorites. these images communicate what I was after, which is about a little dog that gets a new home and the new things he experiences his first summer there.

Now that I have completed all the eyelets in the book , I am ready to lace all the pages of the book together.

I looked at several different ways to bind the book, but this simple way seem to fit with the book. See image 1. I am going to thread all the pages through one side then thread them through the other. Then tie a knot in both sides. Starting the task, see image 2.

Now that I have printed the entire book, I am working on putting it together. I have completed ironing together each page. Now I am putting the pages together with eyelets, or brackets. so I can bind the pages together.

When I started this project, I thought that I would glue or sew the pages together. As I worked on it, I saw these eyelets or brackets at the store. I thought they would be perfect for putting the pages together since the pages are cloth. First I measured the area marking were I wanted to put the eyelet. See image 1. Then I cut holes in the cloth with the scissors. This has to be done carefully or it will cause runs in the cloth, and it looks like a crease in the cloth that didn’t get ink. See image 2. Next punch the eyelets through the cloth. See image 3. Then take a hammer and close the eyelet with the eyelet tool that kinda looks like a nail. See image 4. The top eyelet is closed and I am about ready to close the second.  Then the page is ready to lace together.

I had several different ideas to put together the book with. I thought about gluing it together, but as I worked with the glue and talked to a few ppl. The fabric glue would show through in some areas, not be smooth ect so… Also thought about sewing it together, but after looking at each of the pictures I didn’t plan the sew part in advance so the picture were close to the edge of the cloth and the thread sewn over them would be distracting. So I went with iron-on double backing to make the fabric stick together but also to make the pages a little stiffer. The pages will be easier too turn, hopefully…

well over all I like printing on cloth but there are a few things…. when there is a lot of ink on the surface of the linocut the cloth wrinkles and stretchs. See figure 1. It took more prints than I thought it would to get 4 good ones. some times as many as 6 or seven before it would print without wrinkling the cloth. I tried to feed it in several different ways or alter the presure of the printing press. There didn’t seem to be any set way that it would work for sure, but by just printing I would finally get ones that didn’t wrinkle or stretch the cloth.

1. sample of wrinkle in cloth.

I have carved out all my words for my cloth book on lino-cut. Now I am ready to print. I have laid out the roller and ink. See image 1. I roll out the ink on to the lino-cut and print a rough on to paper, check it. Then print the words out on to cloth, just like I did with the first images.

There are 10 pages of words in the book here they are printed. See image 3. Here is a close up of the printed words on the cloth. See image 4 & 5. The quilt squares have different patterns on them. So the rat words are stars and the bears are paisley.

I have decided to use linocut to print the words on cloth. For several reasons. First I have a lot of linocut blocks. Second since I have been working with the linocut and cloth, I know how the materials work when I print them. I wont have to experiment with another process and cloth printing. Another option would have been a photopolymer plate but I have not used this process before to print on cloth. Maybe another time.

Carving out words from linocut block.

Now that I have completed the images for the book. I am working on the words.

I started by choosing a font that I thought fit with the images from the linocut. Bodoni is an old font and I think it fits with the style of the images. See image 1. Still Bodoni seemed a little to clean cut to fit with the images. So I decided to do a hand drawn version type loosely based on Bodoni. See images 2. & 3. Once all the type was drawn out, I scanned it in to the computer. See image 4. Then I  laid it out again in InDesign. I wanted to see how the hand drawn type would look with the images and to make sure of the sizing. See image 5. Finally I am ready to transfer the image to the linocut. I flipped the image in photoshop, and printed it. See image 6. Now it is ready to trace on to the linocut block. In the same manner as the images I spread with charcoal stick, charcoal on to the back of the paper and trace the type on to the linocut block. then carve out, ink up and print.

one of the images in the book that gave me trouble was the peacock. How to depicted it. The whole bird, should it be in color should it be just a feather? I went through several rounds of different images for this page in the book.

The first peacock image, I like the original photo but it didn’t translate as well to linocut. See image 1. All the shapes and colors, just didn’t work. The image wasn’t total clear what it was, especially the the non-color versions. See image 4. The second image I thought two feathers would be able to communicate the peacock. See image 2. Again I didn’t like how it turned out. The image wasn’t an easy read. So I was on to round three, see image 3. I chose to do one feather with colored cloth. This one was a success. The image is easily recognizable, and clearly communicates a peacock. This is what I wanted for the book.

I have printed the cover of my cloth book, Lucky Ducky Dog a self-portrait.

I have finished printing most of the images for the book. See image 1 and 2. Also I wanted to show a how I print the images. See image 3. I have laid the linocut on to the press bed, Then lay the cloth on top, then protective paper and run it through the press. See image 4.