Teaching bookbinding with The Skillery

The holiday season was filled with teaching classes, selling at shows in Tennessee and wrapping up special orders to be given as gifts across the country.

In early December, I taught a one-day bookmaking workshop through a partnership with The Skillery, the new Nashville company I've mentioned before that encourages locals to teach and to learn new skills. My class about books that can hang as tree ornaments was The Skillery's first event, and it sold out! (Oddly enough, a power outage almost thwarted the whole thing. You can read about that at The Skillery blog. The workshop photos shown here are by Matt Dudley, professional photographer and founder of The Skillery.)

The two-hour workshop sent each student home with two handmade books: a hardcover pamphlet stitch book and a folded paper star book. Like in other classes, I cut paper and bookboard to size in advance to give students a head start so we could jump right into the fun of making books. Unlike some of the other classes, Matt from The Skillery wisely thought to provide wine and snacks for all students, a nice touch for a cozy night class.

The books that students made will be long-lasting keepsakes, and because of their blank pages, they work well for writing messages to family members. When visiting my husband's family just before Christmas, we used one to write memories of the weekend together, then we found a home for it on the tree.