This spring I was able to try my hand at making a book from “scratch”. I didn’t go so far as to make my own paper, and I had the blessing of working from some handwritten notes of my grandmother, and the use of a printer, so there were a few conveniences. The two books shown here have seven signatures with twelve pages in each signature (three legal size pages folded in half). The contents in both books are memories of my grandmother. The cover is a take off from a tutorial from here: http://comfortstitching.typepa
d.co.uk/comfortstitching/2010/01/raw-edge-applique-tutorial.html. Obviously, I made my own design application to the method. It depicts my grandmother’s favorite activity as a young girl: wading in the creek that ran behind their store.
The second stage to this project is to try my hand at making this book into a self-publish book later in the summer, so more family members can have a copy. Books from scratch are not the answer for multiple copies, at least with my skill level at this time. The areas I struggled with were: printing a book fold document with a manual duplex printer, using older photos to print clear and not move around on the pages, page arrangements, correct 
facts in the text, table of contents (!), and dealing with details. When my dad was living, we would commiserate about how one learns to do something, AFTER you do it. He had many like experiences over the years. So having made a few journals and these books, I sort of feel like I have a handle on the process, and that leads to another trite, but true saying: practice makes perfect. Below is a picture of 
one of the pages on the inside.