WEST March/April Design Challenge

If you've read some of my past posts, you will know that I am part of a few Etsy Teams. One of these teams is WEST, or Winnipeg Esty Street Team. Recently I participated in the WEST March/April Design Challenge. 

For this challenge members of WEST were asked to think of spring and use that as inspiration to create something new.

When I think of spring, the first thing that comes to mind is flowers. Flowers everywhere. Now, of course in the city, you don't always see that. But this year we have been blessed with such a gorgeous spring (and pretty good winter too) that we are enjoying spring weather when normally we'd still be shovelling snow. 


Now how do I incorporate "flowers" into bookbinding?

I thought about that for a bit. Since duct tape covers was the only thing I was doing at the time, it didn't really work to make a flower decoration on the cover. I'm sure there's a way, but it seems to involved at the time. I didn't really want to make a flower shaped cover either, although that was also possible.

Then I thought that it would be nice if I could incorporate a flower design into the spine stitching. It would be both a functional and decorative function.

I wondered, "Is that even possible?"

So I started with a sketch of what I wanted to do. Then I made it to scale...

I had no idea is this was possible or note, but I did some practice spines with regular sewing thread (and wrote down the order of the stitches so I could do it again if it worked - very important!)

With a bit of trial and error, I came up with something that would work. I was quite happy with it, particularly because it is something that I didn't know that I could do.

Now I have several books with the flower design! They are available in any colour - pink, blue, red, white, green, orange, purple. If you would like to order one, but don't see the colour you would like, just send me an email (or convo me in Etsy) and I will custom make one for you.

You can check out the rest of the Team Challenge results at the WEST blog.

I am looking forward to the next one.