Finished!...almost

 Yes! I finally finished my Stitchillo project. I managed to finish the binding before the holiday, much to my relief.

The caps of the spine are goatskin leather, and the leather paring gods were not with me for this the first time around. The second time went smoother. 

I started by backing the knitting with paste and a thin sheet of Japanese paper.

 Next I constructed the spine with pieces of 20pt. library board. I wanted the knitting to be at least flush with the leather or slightly recessed. 

Here we are the second time around. The leather at the tail of the spine is darker because it is still wet from paste.

 In the middle of all this I had to chase Jacques out of the paper drawer. My fault of course for leaving it open, as you can clearly see by those eyes - total innocence even though the rest of the photo else is blurry.

Finally the spine is ready for boards. 

In order to both hide the edges of the knitting and make the shoulders work, I had to double the boards. Here is the first board, making the shoulders legitimate. The second board was glued to the outside of the book. You can get a bit better of the idea from the next image.

In our book packages we received some extras including several sheets of printed papers and a belly band. I decided I wanted to use my favorite printed sheets as end sheets. They make a nice contrast to the very plain cover. 

The cover paper is Nepalese Lokta paper. I have had these turquoise sheets for years. I simply love the color. I also wanted the spine to be the main focus of the binding. 

But in the end I do think the cover needs a little detail. 

I designed and tried a little cross-stitch bee with the intention that it should fly off of the line of bees on the spine onto the cover. But it just didn't seem quite right. 

After a conversation with my father (an avid illustrator and hobby printer), he drew me a little bee to be made into a copper cut for my heat stamper. 

Epilogue to follow...