Crochet Book

I briefly mentioned crochet and in that context a book. Well, I finished that book by now, and I thought I’d share some pics and thoughts on it with you. First some photos of the finished book:

I am neither completely happy nor unhappy with this book, or rather with this experiment. I tried a couple of different things on just one book, so it looks unbalanced and not everything worked well. The general idea was to combine crochet lace with leather. I thought I’d be able to integrate the crochet with the binding itself, and the first row of stitches on the (white back cover) was made with the actual sewing thread.

Then I made two lacy squares:

They were then starched and blocked. Since they are made from fairly rigid linen thread, and with a small needle, they are quite stiff anyway.

First I attached the white square to the back cover:

To do this, I made kind of filet blocks all around the dquare, connecting with the row of stiches I had already there. While working on it, it became clear that the square had the wrong size: I was not able to centre it on the spine, and it turned out the pattern overlaps the cover which doesn’t look nice. Also, I had had a larger gap between working on the two, and forgot what thread I had been using: the thread on the spine is a little less bleached than the rest which looks strange.
The new stitches needed to get blocked again, which is what you can see in the photo above.

In the photo below you see me getting ready to attach the green square to the front cover. It became clear, that – with a border needed to attach it to the spine, the white bit was too large, and so I removed two rows from the white. Attaching the green bit was easier and harder at the same time. On the one hand I knew what I was doing, and the square was smaller, which both made it easier to centre it. I wanted to use the same thread on the front that I had used on the back, and that made it harder, to work with it, as it was much thicker than the green thread.

Then I added a frilly border to it, just because.

Now it became very obvious, that the leather back flap would sit on top of the green square which would be a shame. So it is tugged under the front cover. Now it provides invisible protection to the book’s front edge.

Next I needed a closure. Thinking about buttons and these open mesh on the back cover didn’t get me anywhere, and so I made a crochet band. And as if that was alll not yet frilly enough, I added a large bead and a tassle to its end:

Here’s another close-up of the closure:

So, what do I think? Do I like it? – I can’t say, really, I am a bit torn. It all is a bit too much. Attaching the lace to the binding and the spine like I tried here gives the spine an unbalanced look, I think. Suddenly the sewing thread seems so thin and fragile compared with the more solid crochet. – I don’t really like that.

But I kind of like the idea look of these lacy crochet squares in combination with a book. And I have some new ideas. Rather than attaching two pieces left and right to the spine, I would rather make it a large piece that extends over the spine and integrates the sewing better. – You’ll see…