Two Drum Leaf Bindings and One 5-section book

I took a class on Drum Leaf Bindings. I think this might be a good structure for watercolor paintings while on vacation.  The class was brutal (slow, not moderated well, people interrupted, the staff person didn't tell people to mute. . . ) and the actual instruction could have been done in 2 hours instead of 6. I thought my head was going to blow up. 

I made two drum leaf books, and one Japanese album and didn't do the other structures because like I said, I thought my head was going to blow up (they were very simple structures). 

The nice part is that drum leaf books aren't sewn so that when you open them up you have the whole page, not a page with a gutter and a seam. 

The orange book was the first book and I made one major mistake (glued the wrong pages together) and one minor mistake (made the hinge too wide) but I still like it. I always like my first books of a type. And it's orange. What is it with the orange books? I have so many. I have a chunk of black bookcloth that I'm pretty sure that I'll never use up and two chunks of mandarin orange and a sunshine orange bookcloth that I'm almost out of. 

I love orange books. The orange is 3.75" wide x 5.5 high. Inside pages are 140 lb rough watercolor paper (I think Strathmore). The black and tan book is 4"x6" with the same paper. The mistakes I made on the black and tan book are not obvious except to another person who makes books. I like them both! Can't wait to paint on them and see how getting them wet might change the binding. 

Last night I finally finished a book I had ready to go for a few months. I cased the book with some marbled cloth that I bought in Hawaii years ago, backed it with paper a year ago, and cased in about 4 months ago. I used drawing paper that I had rolled in a tube and I flattened it for a couple of months and then tore the signatures and then didn't know what to do. I wanted to do a 6-sig book but it seemed too tight and maybe 5 is not tight enough? The mistakes here are numerous. The major most obvious is that I was eating a cookie when I made the case and left cookie marks on the back cover and on the inside front endsheet. The next most obvious is that the paper never uncurled so the sigs curl. Maybe with humidity they will uncurl? I'm thinking of giving this to Cora for graduation and because she will be going to Hawaii for an internship that I wrote a letter of recommendation for her to. And I'll tell her the spots are from me eating a cookie. I don't think she'll mind. 

The stitching pattern was easy enough. It is from the Kevin Smith book (for 3 sigs) and I practiced it on cardboard first (because Roz encourages this) so that I could see if it would work when I adapted the pattern.