The term “Hussif” is short for “huswif” or “housewife”, and is a word used to describe these historical travel sewing kits. In the 18th and 19th centuries, sewists, sailors, and soldiers alike carried a hussif.

In this workshop, students will create their own hand stitched hussif that contains three pockets for stashing threads, small scissors or snips, thimble, fabric scraps, etc. There is also an area at the bottom for pins, needles and safety pins. The huswif is designed to be rolled up, tied, and easily carried in a pocket, bag, or luggage, and keeps your supplies neat and tidy during your travels, while attending a workshop, or around the house.

This is a perfect project to use up fabric scraps since the pocket sizes are relatively small and the backing can be pieced together. Finished product is 4 ½ x 15" unrolled.

Prerequisite: None

Materials to bring:

Students will supply their own materials and some tools. Please bring:

- the equivalent of about 1/2 yard of fabric. Historically, the Hussif was made out of scraps of fabric pieced together. The largest piece is the backing which will be 5 x 16", but it can be pieced together. The other pieces range from 5 x 7" to5 x 3.5". Reuse is encouraged!

- 1 piece of fabric (20 x 2.5") or ribbon or twill tape (20") - this is for the tie.

- 1 or 2 pieces of felt or wool (about 3 x 3") for needles. It can also be a piece of regular woven fabric

- thread (sashiko, machine thread, purl cotton, embroidery thread, etc., bring a variety

Tools: sharp scissors or rotary cutter, needles to fit your threads, pins, thread snips. SFCB has cutting mats for your use.

About the Instructor: Jody Alexander (she/her) is a mixed media artist who lives and works in Santa Cruz and Penn Valley, California. She combines textiles, paper, found items and imagery to create books, objects, wall pieces, garments, and installations. Her current work is inspired by the art of repair, reuse, and imagery and stories encountered in her travels and everyday.

Her work appears in a number of publications including Masters: Book Arts: Major Works by Leading Artist, 500 Handmade Books, and 1000 Artists' Books: Exploring the Book as Art. Jody was an artist in residence at the Santa Cruz Resource Recovery Facility in 2019, and is the 2015 recipient of the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from U.C.L.A., and a Master’s degree in Library Science from Simmons College, Boston, MA.

Jody teaches and exhibits nationally and internationally.

Create your own beautiful, unique journal. Students will use a special punch tool to construct sewing stations in the suede leather cover. Then we’ll fold and stitch inside pages for the multi-signature book, with an option to add a button closure.

The finished book makes a lovely keepsake or gift, and this workshop is a great introduction to basic bookbinding skills.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite: None

Materials to Bring: All tools and materials are provided.

About the Instructor: Elaine G. Chu (she/her) has taught students of all ages, in person and online. Her work has been featured in “Greencraft” and “Somerset Studio” magazines as well as “1000 Artists’ Books.” She co-authored “Wood Paper Scissors,” a how-to crafts book. Elaine received a B.A. in music at Yale University and a B.F.A. in graphic design at University of the Arts. View more at EGChuHandcrafted.etsy.com and on Instagram @egchu1.

This workshop takes place on three consecutive Thursday evenings.

Let’s pick up where we left off on our last night—Billy's take on Copperplate/Spencerian. We’ll practice our strokes and bring them together to create upper and lower case letter forms. Then we'll experiment with different inks and gouaches on various papers.

SFCB's Windgate Scholarship Fund is dedicated to providing need-based financial support to individuals interested in learning bookbinding, letterpress printing, and related book arts. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite: Hand Lettering I

Materials to bring: 

Mechanical pencil
Pelikan® 4001 Brilliant Black Ink
Straight Pen Holder
Ultra-Fine Point Sharpie®
C-Thru® B-85 Ruler

(A limited number of inks will available for purchase directly from Billy)

About the Instructor: Billy Ola Hutchinson’s passion for lettering began in pre-school with the assistance of Mommy Billie. Billy and Billie spent hours shaping letterforms day in and day out. Later in life, Little Billy parlayed that lettering passion into a calligraphic profession, creating a petit line of stationery, penning custom lettering for clients, designing a line of porcelain for San Francisco's luxury speciality store, Gump’s and of course as an instructor at SFCB—taking students through those first steps Little Billy took with Big Billie. Billy's lettering has been featured in magazines, wedding invitations, place cards, monograms, and brand identities.

This workshop takes place on two Sundays, one week apart.

Students with previous linocut experience will learn about multiblock carving and printing, in which each carved block is inked with a different color.

We will create designs on 5 x 7" linoleum for two blocks/two colors, then transfer the image onto the blocks and learn about registration so that each color lines up on the finished print. Students will have a week between sessions so they can complete their carving at home, then return to print on the second day.

All students will leave with an edition of their print on quality printmaking paper using a Cylinder Press. 

Students will learn registration methods for hand printing as well, and learn how to edition a print run. The workshop fee includes a carving tool for students to keep.

Prerequisite: Intro to Linoleum Carving & Printing or other single-color lino carving experience.

Materials to Bring: Bring ideas for a simple 5x7" design; ideally at least two sketches so the instructor can help choose which will work best. 

About the Instructor: Patricia Wakida (she/her) is a bibliophile, artist and writer with a background in trade publishing. Her relations to books are kept tangible and toothsome by running wasabi press, making illustrated letterpress books, broadsides, posters and cards on a Chandler and Price tabletop platen press and a small etching press. Patricia’s book arts education began with an apprenticeship in Japanese papermaking in Mino, Gifu- prefecture, Japan in 1996, followed by an apprenticeship at the Arts and Crafts Press under linoleum block artist and letterpress printer Yoshiko Yamamoto, in Berkeley, California. She has also taught linoblock carving and letterpress workshops as a teaching assistant in the book arts program at Mills College, the San Francisco Center for the Book, and ASUC Art Studio. 

Learn to make knotted and beaded bindings with flair!

This workshop will cover five different exposed stitches to spice up a simple blank pamphlet, with a variety of embellishments for added fun. This class is a straightforward introduction to the aesthetic possibilities of single-section books.

Prerequisite: None

Tools/Materials to bring: None. All tools and materials are provided.

About the Instructor: Dorothy Yuki (she/her) studied to be something other than an artist. She began as a fashion designer immediately after college but soon she became a partner of a manufacturing company, In Good Company, from 1965-1976. She designed and manufactured kitchen soft goods and linens. Later, as a production and design consultant, she worked with many identity and music production companies, as well as new startups.

Now in her 80s and living in San Francisco, she is engaged in many volunteer activities, Ruth’s Table, Artseed, SCRAP-SF, San Francisco Center for the Book, and FabMo. She also mentored at Bay High School in their Senior Program. She was past President of Friends of Calligraphy and has been a Master Educator for the Macy’s Fashion Incubator San Francisco.

She still has the time to do ‘art’ and has worked on projects for MMOCA, Flax Art and Design, Kalligraphia, Ruth’s Table, FabMo and SCRAP-SF. She is a recipient of Honorable Mentions for her artwork at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art Altered Book Show 2014 and 2015. To find out more about Dorothy's work, visit her blog www.dotsrainbow.com

In this introductory class, students will gain a basic understanding of the history, techniques, tools and styles of European marbling.

Students will get hands-on experience of all aspects of Western marbling techniques from paper priming and preparatory mixing of water medium and paints, to the creation of classical patterns. Specific attention will be given to learning how to obtain particular designs using a diverse array of rakes and combs. Students will have ample time for experimentation with guidance from the instructor and will leave with a sampling of papers they've marbled themselves.  

*Please note that paper marbling is a wet process and papers made in the workshop may not be dry at the end of class. Students may return to SFCB after the workshop to retrieve any papers left to dry at the of the day or request mailed returns. 

Prerequisite: None

Materials to bring: All tools and materials will be provided. Please wear comfortable shoes for standing that you don't mind getting wet.

About the Instructor: Pietro Accardi (he/him) owned a Bookbindery in Turin (Italy) for 12 years. He worked for Turin’s main Library, Municipal Archives, and University Libraries restoring and binding documents and books. He also runs his own paper marbling and decorative box making business. Now he lives near Lake Tahoe with wife, cats and a studio. He is currently working for the library of special collections of University of Reno doing restoration work and teaches workshops.

Handmade boxes are not only lovely, they are also quite useful and can be used to store a range of objects, not just books.

Using hard board and marbled fabric, the instructor will walk students through the basics of creating decorative boxes. Expanding on these primary box building skills, students will learn about more complex functions by adding a hatch-top and bottom drawer.

This particular structure also features rounded corners, giving a pleasing twist to the standard pointed corner. Everyone will leave with a multi-purpose box that is ready to use.

Students will select their marbled fabric from a selection marbled by Pietro.

Prerequisite: None

Materials to bring: All tools and materials will be provided. 

About the Instructor: Pietro Accardi (he/him) owned a Bookbindery in Turin (Italy) for 12 years. He worked for Turin’s main Library, Municipal Archives, and University Libraries restoring and binding documents and books. He also runs his own paper marbling and decorative box making business. Now he lives near Lake Tahoe with wife, cats and a studio. He is currently working for the library of special collections of University of Reno doing restoration work and teaches workshops.

For centuries, traditional Vietnamese papermaking communities have depended on various plant materials local to their region for making handmade paper for spiritual and utilitarian uses. Handmade paper was a way of life connecting ancestral and ecological knowledge together.

While papermaking is still practiced in Vietnam, the history of colonization, war, and rapid industrialization have changed the landscape of traditional practices. Vietnamese papermaking is only practiced within a few communities and is quickly disappearing from generation to generation.

In this workshop, participants will learn traditional Vietnamese papermaking techniques using the liềm seo (bamboo woven screen) and khung seo (two-part wooden frame) to make paper. We will work with dó (pronounced zaw), a perennial tree shrub growing in only Northern Vietnam specifically used for traditional handmade paper unique for its lustrous sheen and durability.

We will work in various sizes—9 x 12’’ and 12 x 18’’—and everyone will have a chance to build their own unique library sample of dó paper. Instruction will cover fiber preparation, hand beating, sheet formation, pressing, drying using traditional equipment, and demos of bark manipulation like bark lace and making thread. Expect to gain knowledge on traditional Vietnamese papermaking techniques and its history to craft related artforms while also expanding your own papermaking studio practice.

Four 50% scholarships are available for people of the Vietnamese diaspora. Please fill out our scholarship application form; tell us a bit about you and how this class would impact you and/or your art practice. Selected recipients will be notified by September 15. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite:
None

Materials to bring:
All tools and materials will be provided.

About the Instructor:
Veronica Y Pham works primarily in papermaking and fiber arts in her studio practice. Her work focuses on traditional craft specific to Vietnamese and Chinese histories to connect ideas of process, knowledge through generational labor, and questions of identity.

The materials in her work often become environmental investigations containing a visual and kinetic language, repeated based on interlacements, linear elements and ecological spatial relationships. Pham continues to work with traditional and contemporary papermakers in Vietnam with a focus on collaborative projects and research. Her favorite materials to work with are milkweed and hemp.