Instagram Bookbinding Challenge: January / Light

I've been participating in an online bookbinding community challenge, where each month bookmakers from around the world challenge themselves to create a book on a chosen theme for the month. The theme for January was Light. If you are on Instagram, search the hashtag #areyoubookenough to find all the amazing creations of participating artists. Prepare yourself to be inspired!

For myself, I was inspired by a stack of rainbow coloured Canson Mi-Teintes artists papers I had saved for a few years, intending to make a rainbow book one day. What is light, if not the beautiful spectrum of colours before us?

Don't these torn sheets look gorgeous in this stack? I was tempted to stop there. Sometimes it's hard to use up beautiful supplies!

After cutting and folding and grouping the pages into signatures, I started on the covers. I wanted to make a softcover book with a simple stitched rainbow on the cover. I chose the cover fabric from my stash, because I'm all about using up, recycling, and making do with what you have: a black wool suiting fabric for the outside and a grey wool for the inside.

Choosing thread colours--yup, all the colours of the rainbow are there!

To make the covers a little stiffer, I used a sturdy interfacing between the layers. In this case, I found this crazy vegetable printed interfacing in my stash (not sure where I picked that up!), and started stitching my rainbow.

I was delighted to find a vintage spool of black linen thread in my supplies, and used it to bind my books.

I think the prism button finishes it off nicely, don't you?

I made a limited edition of four of these books, and they are now available in my PrairiePeasant Etsy shop.