Buttons through the ages

Well, when I get started on a project it seems to take over somehow.
This one started off about the Atlantic Ocean
as I am reading Simon Winchester's fascinating book on this very subject but somehow the signatures I was doing wouldn't jell. I had introduced a button to represent Christopher Columbus and it just didn't work out. The other
signatures also decided, nope, this was not a book about the Atlantic ocean.....

So I plugged on, and at this stage I had used up the wooden buttons I bought in Tasmania years ago intending them for one of my knit-woven
garments.
So, there was nothing for it but to make this a book about buttons , how old the oldest button ever found was, and the psychology involved in buttons through the ages.
It turned out to be a very interesting subject which could be expanded into a major work...

 I did  these signatures in landscape form, as there again, the way I had positioned the painted Bondaweb looked better to my eye than the usual upright page.
I ran into more technical problems as well, as I had decided to use some velvet as backing for the pages. Velvet of course has nap and also a mind of its own when being stitched as the nap will resist in some areas ans want to slant off on its own trajectory

 Then I had also forgotten to allow for a flange on the velvet and this had to be added on after
as the signatures have to be visible but bound into the covers. Putting the flanges together in between the covered cardboard, and then piercing the lot to get the binding thread through was quite tricky and they are not all lined up as they should be because of the resisting nap of the velvet...... So I will return to recycling more cotton denim jeans for backing the signatures....

Last Wednesday, we went to the Mt Lofty Botanic Park to see the rhododendrons and azaleas flowering, but they were not quite at their best I think another ten days or so.
I loved the ornate flowering cherry tree, next to the steps they created last year so you can go down to the dam and feed the ducks.
We always come home via the Balhannah and Hahndorf  towns
and Hahndorf was an absolute nightmare to come through as the
road is so narrow and the sides crowded with parked vehicles,
where do all these people come from.......
The garden too, at the moment is taking quite a lot of time but it is good to see it emerging less like a wilderness. Whats more, the Tawny Frogmouth is still sitting on his nest, meanwhile the greenies have hatched and fledged their young and life goes on
amongst the gumtrees.......