I’ve been busy. I usually work on two or more books at any time. Frequently I will need more information or another image or just waiting for glue to dry. So this isn’t unusual. I was in Washington, D. C. in Spring and took pictures at the Burning Man exhibit at the Renwick.

This huge sculpture of a woman dancing in freedom was the highlight for me. I took many pictures and I liked this explanation about the sculpture.

I wanted to use the photos in a book but they weren’t wonderful. So the problem was how to express the same theme using my not wonderful photos. I looked online for an interesting binding (always a good way to add involvement) and found something that really worked for me.

I added ‘equal’ to the statement because women will never be safe unless they are equal. The book is small: 2 3/4″ by 5 1/4″ and opens to about 13 inches. It’s kind of an origami fold or modified Turkish map fold that begins with a square. The whole thing works best with relatively thin sheets of paper. My paper was 20″ wide; I wanted to make four squares, so each had to be five inches. The translucent vellum was really too thick but I couldn’t get thinner stuff through the printer. After much gnashing of teeth and three iterations I got what I wanted.

I began the second book before I started any of the other three. This is my redesign of Aunt Flo’s Memoir published as a page on this website. I could have printed out the pdf and bound it as a single page stab binding but I haven’t been happy with that binding. I went from 8 1/2 x 11″ single pages to 8 1/2 x 14″ folded pages creating four signatures of five folded sheets, twenty pages in each signature. It’s hard to figure out how many sheets you will end up with when images are involved and you should have an even multiple. Very tricky. I think it was more work that when I originally entered the material from the handwritten copy. After I printed it out to my satisfaction I spent a lot of time on a cover. Fancy paper by itself doesn’t do it for me. My aunt spent much of her life as a milliner, so I created a purple felt hat and stitched in onto a handmade paper with some plant inclusions.