Assembly: Coptic Sampler Book

A very long time ago i showed a sampler book I made I made this tutorial and put it in draft form and forgot it was here.  Looked at all the drafts I had for my blog that I did long ago and realized this one was complete and never poster for the last 5 years.  Not sure how that happened but enjoy this new but old post.


Bookbinding
Supplies for link stitch book (aka coptic book)

• Finished covers: 
• wood :plained, sanded smooth, with holes drilled in them
• davey board :covered in decorative paper
• fabric : sewn
• signatures :Pressed and punched pages (pages in a group are known as signatures)
• Curved or straight needle
• Bone folder or iron (if it is paper, use a bone folder; if  it is fabric, you can use either a bone folder or iron)
• Scissors
• thread for sewing ( has to be strong can be waxed)
• Teasing needle (or awl)

Picture 1

• Shows how the first signature is sewn to the cover.
• To tighten stitches use your needle to pull at the stitches.
• Always make sure you have enough thread to sew on covers.
• Never add thread when sewing on the covers, only add on the inside of a signature.

Picture 2

• If you have been careful not to get your threads twisted, your book should look similar to picture 2.
• If you have been sewing right to left, instead of left to right, all of the instructions are mirror-opposite.

Picture 3

• Hold the loop from the kettle stitch hole to keep it from pulling through, and pull on the first stitch (out of the fabric hole) to snug up the slack inside of the signature.
• See picture 3

Picture 4

• Then pull on the left side of the loop stitch so that the first stitch pulls up snug.
• See picture 4

Picture 5 A and 5 B

• Pull the loop stitch snug by pulling the second stitch up out of the cover hole as in picture 5A or 5B

Picture 6

• Pull the rest of the stitches snug in the same manner.
• The loop from the kettle stitch should still be there.

Picture 7

• When the first gather and the cover have been sewn together, it should look like picture 7.

Picture 8

• Check between the cover and the first gather .
• The thread should look like picture 8 and the outside should look like picture 7 with the first stitch and the second stitch lying next to each other.
• If the stitches are twisted over each other, you should undue them and re-sew.

Picture 9

• Press the thread into the fabric with the board folder after you sew on each signature.
• The link stitch is used to sew the signatures together.
• The basic pattern is shown in picture 9.
• The links are sewn in the opposite direction of the sewing direction

Picture 10

• Picture 10 shows how to sew the second signature onto the first one.
• The link stitches go between the fist signature and the cover.
• The thread comes out the kettle stitch hole of the second gather and sews through the loop in the kettle stitch hole in the first signature.
• The tail end of the thread can then be pulled snug, to pull the loop snug, as shown at the left of picture 10.

Picture 11

• Check again between the cover and the first signature.
• The link stitch should be only around the bottom of the first and second stitch as shown in picture 11.
  
• It should not be sewn through the loop stitch, or any of the threads.
• When sewing onto cover, it is a good idea to part-way open the cover as you sew the links onto it to avoid sewing through any previous cover attachment stitches.
• There are fewer problems sewing the rest of the link stitches.

Picture 12

• Sew on the third signature as shown in picture 12.
• The link stitches are sewn only around the previous gather.

Picture 13A

• In picture 13 A it shows the kettle stitch, sewn from either end of the book.
• After the third signature, a kettle stitch is sewn, and after every signature for the rest of the book.
• To sew the kettle stitch, pull the thread toward the cover center (A on figure 13 A)

Picture 13B

• Point the needle between the two previous signatures for example, if you have just finished sewing on the third signature, your needle goes between the first signature and second signature (see right hand side of figure 13A) or, if you have gone on and finished the fourth signature, the needle goes between signature 2 and 3 as in picture 13 B.
• The needle always points into the book.
• The needle goes under the previous loop joining the previous signatures and over the thread that is pulled toward the base of the book.
• Pull your needle straight up.
• Do not go back under any thread.
• You should have a loop that is sewn through

Picture 14

• 
  

Picture 15

• 
  

Picture 16

• tie off and cut thread

Week 6 TAST Algerian eye stitch

This is this week's TAST stitch, and my whole sampler is growing rather well. I think by the time this is all done I will have three, or maybe even four, of these to frame and hang on the wall. I am glad I choose only two colors for this one; it is neat to figure out how to make them play on each other to show differences in the stitches.

TAST Week 5 chevron stitch

I am a little slow posting this week. I have two sick kids; one with a ruptured ear drum, on the mend, and the other has Scarlet fever. So I will try and get caught up with my fabric samples later. I just am not too worried about that at the moment. I will make sure I am at least doing one of the two projects each week. This is also the reason I have not finished making the book tutorial.

TAST: Week 4 Cretan Stitch Part 1

Even though it is not Tuesday here in Utah, it is on the other side of the Earth. I believe the blog that hosts TAST is in Australia, so it is always a day ahead. She has posted TAST already for the day. I got my perforated paper sample done today. I will work on the fabric one through out the week.

TAST: Week 3 Lazy Daisy, detached chain

Here is my sample on my little 4 inch wool square. I played with satin ribbon, wool, cotton, rayon, beads, buttons, sequins. I think I went a little overboard, too. I should have had more cool colors and not so many warm; oh well ,it is a sample. I may add a few more flowers, now that I have seen it in a picture. It looks like it has a few holes I don't like.

Week 3Then I decided to add a few beads to week 2 since I had the beads out.Here is the perforated paper one.

Caught up on TAST

Over the weekend I made a sampler book to put in my embroidery samples from TAST. I am able to put in nine samples to a page. My samples are on little green squares of wool that I hand wove on a vintage Weave-it loom. I only have 20 squares woven at the moment, but I will weave more as I need them or as I get a chance, whichever comes first.

The sampler green pages are hand stitched into the book. This can be done before or after you have embroidered on them. I stitched them in first so I could get the placement right; mine overlap a little . Mine are only sewn in on the top so it is easy to access the back while embroidering. If you want to sew it down on all sides, I suggest embroidering the sample first, then attaching it to the book. My husband hates the green color, but it is something I already had made, and it is just for samples anyway. Plus I think it is nice to have a bright color. I think it is rather eye catching myself. If you notice in the picture, I placed floss bobbins as my tag to state what the item is. On the second one it tells what stitch it is on the back side of the tag. If you want, you could embroider on the space below the square sample. But that is too permanent for me in case I want to change this later.

I also did a row sampler; one row for each week. This I did on the perforated paper.

I have completed week one and week two, so I am back on track and ready for week three.

Week 1
Herringbone

Week 2
blanket stitch ( buttonhole?)

T.A.S.T. & sampler book

I have wanted a sampler book for some time, so the TAST project pushed me into making one. If you don't know what a sampler book is, they where popular about 100 years ago. Women would make books to keep samples of tatting, crochet, knitting, quilting, embroidery or any other type of hand work they could think of. They usually have a cloth cover and cloth pages for ease in attaching samples. I have a vintage one that has lost its cover; I'll take photos of that later and show it. Now that I have this made, I can get started on my samplers and get caught up. I was going to use perforated paper, but that doesn't lend itself to curves very easily, and I think this will be more fun this way.

Mine has gabardine wool pages and a silk/wool cover. The gabardine was given to me in trade of a repair job and the cover fabric was given to me by a lady at MJF (I can't remember who at the moment). There are fourteen signatures (sections) in this one, with four sides for a total of fifty-four surfaces to attach too. Also the pages are eleven inches tall by fifteen inches wide with a pocket for storing information of patterns associated with items on the outside of the pages. The cover is a half inch bigger on top and bottom flush on spine and hangs over about 1 1/4 inches on the end. This is so, if I decide to attach lace samples to the edges of the pages, they will still be protected from wear and tear.

I want to make a few more of these for my tatting, crochet, and other lace making. Might be fun to do one for quilting too.

Vintage sampler books like the one shown here from my collection had colored pages for the lace samples to be displayed on. This way it was easier to see the patterns in the lace. In embroidery sampler books it doesn't really matter as you will be sewing in the samples on their own fabric. This way they are removable if you want to use them later. So the ones I will make later for lace samples will have colored pages like these. They will either be made out of heavy cotton as these antique ones are or they will be made out of wool which was also common. This book is c. 1900.

TAST

I signed up for TAST (take a stitch Tuesday). I wanted to do mine on the perforated papers. I know I have about 20 of those around here; it is driving me nuts trying to find them. So, as of right now, I am one and a half weeks behind on this. But once I find them I will get to work on them toute suite. I would like them to either be something I can make a little sampler book out of, or something I might be able to frame and hang on a wall. I just have got to find those papers first to make my ideas work.

What is TAST -- Take a Stitch Tuesday -- a new stitch is shown and you have a few days to practice it, take a picture, and post it on your blog or on flickr. So right now I am a little behind, but since there have only been two Tuesdays I should be able to get caught up quickly. I believe this goes the entire year.

The pictures are from this summer. I thought some color would be nice on a gray day. It is also keeping with the Valentine theme ie. love bugs.

In case my link breaks here is the web address if you want to sign up. Please add the two lines together blogger kept cutting off the end of it so I had to break it in half.
http://inaminuteago.com/blog/index.php/
archives/category/take-a-stitch-tuesday/