Accordion Samples

Some of you were asking what you could do inside of your accordion books.  Well the sky is the limit actually.  To keep things simple, since we are going to be doing a different book every two weeks and the name of the course is Fabric Covered Books, not Fabric Books, we are going to be making the interior of our books out of paper.  

I'm going to be showing you how to attach blank paper to your books, more for the sake of time than anything else.  That doesn't mean you can't have fun decorating your paper.  It is just easier to decorate ahead of time.  When that isn't possible, just save attaching your covers until you have finished your decorating.  That's what I do.  

I'm going to show you some examples of things that can be done with an accordion fold book.

The first accordion is a simple folded accordion that has been painted and then glued to wooden skewers.  It does not have a formal cover but it could have one.  The challenge is keeping things even so it will stand up.

The second one is double sided with paint on one side and decorative paper on the other.  Beads are on the wooden dowels and for the purposes of the pictures and the surface I was using, it was easier to take the picture with the beads as feet even though I think I wanted the beads on top.

For this accordion book, I  randomly painted a sheet of watercolour paper and then cut it up.  I could have put down masking tape in random places and then removed it and used the blank spaces for writing in but I knew I wanted regularly spaced writing places so I printed out what I wanted and glued it on top of my pages. 

This is my alphabet book.  I cut out a block alphabet and just made sure that my letters touched each other. I joined paper where necessary to get enough length. 

Accordion books can also combine Pop-up attributes with in the fold lines.

There can also be double accordions which are two accordion folds that are woven into each other.

And the accordion fold can also be used as a vehicle for signatures.  They can be attached to the valley or the mountain folds. The folds can be the full width of the signatures or simply be a spine attachment. 

The following accordion had hinges out of decorative paper that became part of the design.

The paper in the following accordion was stained with dye ink and stamped.

These are just a few of the examples of interiors for accordion books.  If you can think of it, you can do it.

I've recently begun to stitch into my accordion books.  I use a 140lb or 300gsm watercolour paper and I find that that gives me enough strength for stitching.  I usually plan and pre-punch my stitching holes.  That prevents my paper from buckling or bending with the pressure of the needle.

You will find that a lot of what is possible with paper is also possible, with a little ingenuity and some stabilizer, with fabric.  Once you understand the structure of the book, in fact, most of the books we will be looking at, you will see the possibilities before you.

Happy experimenting.