Daffodil still life

One of the delights of having a garden is to be able to pick flowers and bring them inside and continue to enjoy them throughout the week.  This is especially true in Spring when the weather jumps back and forth between warm and cold.

One of my favorite group of spring flowers are Daffodils.  They are bright and cheerful flowers that burst out of the slowly warming ground and bounce back from late winter snows.  They remind us winter will end and spring will return.  Picked flowers will last for days in a vase; long enough for me to find the time to sketch and paint them.

Daffodil is a common name used for bulbs in the Narcissus genus.  They are not native to the US, but have been a popular plant in gardens and parks for generations.  The common large flowered variety are often found along roads and in meadows.  They continue to thrive long after the gardens they were planted in are gone. 

The flowers have a central bowl-shaped corona, three sepals and three petals.  The flower color ranges from white through shades of yellow and orange, pink and red.  The corona and perianth can be the same color, or different colors.   There are single flowered and multi-flowered forms.  The multi-flowered forms often have small delicate flowers.  Some flowers are fragrant.

Of whelks and snowflakes from Sapelo Island

I recently took a weekend trip to Sapelo Island, one of my favorite places in Georgia.  I was busy most of the trip working on a Friends of the Marine Institute project, but since I had taken my watercolor traveling kit with me, I did find time to sketch some Knobbed whelks (Busycon carica) that were on the window sill at the cottage we stayed in.  Outside the window in the background is a row of Snowflakes.

Snowflakes (Leucojum aestivum) are a bulb in the amaryllis family.  Their arching sprays of five to seven blooms appear in mid to late spring.  The dangling white flowers resemble small white bells with small green spots at the end of each of the six tepals.  In the south, Snowflakes are considered an heirloom plants and passed down from generation to the next.  It was introduced to Gardens in the Eastern United States by the first European settlers.  The bulbs are tough, surviving late frost and snow as well as deer and chipmunks.  The Snowflakes in my garden always remind me of spring on Sapelo Island.  This sketch to the right is a close up of Snowflake flowers blooming in my garden.

Double needle coptic stitched book

The double needle coptic stitched book was the most challenging and rewarding book we made.  Early Christians living in Egypt are thought to be responsible for developing the coptic style of binding pages, by stitching their edges together and to front and back covers.  The binding stitches form of chain from the folded edge of one signature to the next.  This type of binding is strong and flexible, and allows the book to open flat.  Uncovered the spine of the book exposes both the chain stitches of the binding as well as the folded edges of the paper, which can be very beautiful, as seen in the photo to the right of our classes books.

The 6" by 9" tall book would have seven signatures of eight folios each.  That meant it was time to measure and tear more paper, and fold more signatures.  Because the spine's of the signatures would be visible when the book was complete, decorative paper covers were cut for each signature.  The covers were folded and glued to the spine of each signature.  The finished signatures, at right, were placed under a weighted board to flatten.

The covers and signatures are so close in size only one jig was needed.  The jig has 4 holes (one pair at the top and the other at the bottom).  This type of coptic stitching always uses pairs of holes.  There is a length of thread for each pair of holes and a needle is attached at either end of the thread.  I used an open-ended hole punch cradle and needle awl to punch all the signatures for the books I made in this class.  The signature is placed in the cradle, with the jig on top.  Signature and jig are always pushed up against the top of the cradle to ensure the punched holes will all lineup.

Book board was measured and cut for the front and back covers.  Decorative paper was glued to the outside of the book boards and wrapped around the edges of the board to the inside.  Smaller pieces of a complementary decorative paper were glued to the inside of the book boards, covering the edges of the paper wrapped from the outside (similar to how the accordion book covers were made).  The finished covers were placed under a weighted board to flatten while drying. The same jig was used to determine the correct spacing of the holes on the covers, which were then punched with the needle awl (finished covers at left sitting on the foam board used for punching holes).

The covers and signatures were stacked in order for sewing.  Two lengths of 4 cord waxed thread long enough to complete a pair of bindings were cut.  If the thread is too short additional lengths of thread can be attached using weavers knots (A lesson I learned).  So we could try using both curved and straight needles; one length of thread was attached to two blunt straight needles, and the other thread was attached to two blind curved needles (as seen at right).

We started by attaching the first signature to the front cover.  The thread was adjusted so it was equal for each pair of needles and locked in place using a locking stitch.  I continued adding each additional signature, snugging and locking the stitches in place.  The back cover was attached to the last signature, snugged and locked in place.  The final knots were tied and threads trim off.