Exploring Woven Concertina Books

At a recent meeting of Papermakers & Artists Qld, we learnt an interesting technique of woven concertina books.  I've also completed Helen Hiebert's online weaving course this year, so I've had an interest in the idea of using my old folio monoprints to create new images in a woven form.

For the upcoming Compassion exhibition (details below), I decided to make a small series of woven concertina books, using old monoprints, collagraphs and rusted papers.

The technique I used was to fold a long concertina and cut long strips through the middle (reserving the ends for covers).  Then weave pieces of another print for each of the concertina pages.  The result gives maximum contrast and interest to a couple of ordinary prints.  Most of the prints were double sided, but with those that weren't I added more strips of left over prints, some of them not even the same size.  I applied some glue so that the book didn't work itself loose and they look better without too many gaps.

I'm happy with the completed books....and my folio and print drawers are a little bit less full now :-)

These books will be on sale at the Compassion exhibition at the gallery shop.

Step 1 -fold concertina then cut strips along middle

Step 2 - weave strips of contrasting prints.
The width of each strip is equal to the
width of the concertina pages/

Finished woven books, showing prints
glued to create covers.

The weave.  This one is interesting - it looks like the
Magpie is walking past a Venetian blind :-)

The one weaves a feather monoprint with a brown collagraph.

Collagraph print as a cover, I love the scratchy texture
of this one.

This one has rusted paper with feather monoprints.

This is where they will be on sale.