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.

In this three day knife making and sharpening workshop, we will make several knives by hand using stock reduction, and discuss, sharpen, alter, clean and restore a wide variety of edge tools that participants bring.

Specific attention will be paid to the tools that book and paper conservators frequently use: paring knives, lifting knives, spatulas, scissors, hole punches, spokeshaves and board shear blades.

Basic principals of steel and blade geometry will be discussed. This class will focus on the techniques of efficient free-hand sharpening, which is applicable to any sharpening system.

Participants will use 3M Microfinishing film to make a large paring or lifting knife, two small knives of their choosing, and refurbish and sharpen existing knives. The goal is to free participants from the plethora of misinformation and mystique that surrounds sharpening and the shaping material using hand tools, and learn fundamental freehand techniques.

Click here for a preview of how and why to sharpen your knives correctly.

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. There is a 50% need-based scholarship set aside for this class. Click here to apply.

Prerequisite:
None

Materials to bring:
All tools and materials will be provided. Students should also bring their own knives or other edge tools in need of sharpening.

About the Instructor:
Jeff Peachey is a bookbinder and book conservator providing a wide variety of bookbinding and conservation services for institutions and individuals. He is a Professional Associate in the AIC and has served as Chair of Conservators In Private Practice.

He is the inventor of the Peachey Board Slotting Machine, which is used by many institutions worldwide to help treat books with detached boards. He is also active in researching the history of bookbinding. 

One of his current passions is investigating the philosophy of tools, which he maintains have a much larger role in craft than previously thought. For the past 25 years, Jeff has been designing and making innovative bookbinding tools, see more at: peacheytools.com 

Scaleboard is thin wood that was used in some American bindings (particularly around Boston) as early as the 1680s through the 1840s. It was used even as paste- or pulp-board materials became widely available in America.

In this two-day workshop, students will learn the variations found in these wonderfully simple American bindings through examination of historical examples and discussion. We will also consider current theories regarding the use and manufacture of scaleboard as a material.

The workshop will culminate in the hands-on creation of two models: a full leather binding and a quarter leather binding with paper-covered boards.

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: Students should be comfortable sewing multi-section textblocks; Bookbinding Core 2 or equivalent

Materials to bring: All tools and materials will be provided. Students are also welcome to bring any of their own favorite bookbinding tools.

About the Instructor: Bill Hanscom (they/them) is a library conservation professional, educator, and author. Since 2009, they have worked as a conservation technician for special collections at Harvard Library’s Weissman Preservation Center. They taught undergraduate courses in bookbinding, letterpress printing, book art theory, and independent publishing for the Book Arts BFA program at Montserrat College of Art from 2010 to 2023, serving as its coordinator for seven years. For more than a decade, Bill has regularly taught workshops on historical bookbinding structures and other book arts and preservation topics for North Bennet Street School, the Guild of Bookworkers, and other organizations. Bill lives in Rockport, Massachusetts with their wife and three children.

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. 

This workshop will explore the potentials of placing a scroll in a codex bindings cover, considering the mechanics, past uses, and postulating new structures and applications.

Participants will make two 3x6 inch scrolling books that have a paper scroll text block wrapped around wooden dowels, mounted in wooden framework, then bound in a paper covered case binding.

Time will be allocated to decorate the bindings and add text to the scroll. Workshop attendees should come prepared with a short quote for a text.

Basic paper will be provided but it is suggested you bring interesting paper to use for the covers and scrolling text page. You may also want to bring paints, watercolors, pens, rubberstamps, images to collage, etc. to illustrate and add text to your books.

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: Some bookmaking experience is preferred.

Materials to bring: Students are encouraged to bring beautiful paper and art supplies to individualize their work, as well as their own bookbinding tools if they have them.

About the Instructor: Peter Thomas is a book artist from Santa Cruz. He works collaboratively with Donna Thomas, making both edition and one-of-a-kind books. They make the paper, print, illustrate and bind their books, combining the precision of the fine press aesthetic with the structural creativity found in contemporary artists' books. In 2004 Quarry Press published their “More Making Books by Hand,” between 2009-2019 they traveled the country as the "Wandering Book Artists,” and in 2022 The Legacy Press published Peter and Donna Thomas: Bibliography, 1974–2020. 

Discover the magic of Polaroid emulsion lifts in this hands-on workshop exploring one of photography's most tactile and unpredictable processes.

Participants will learn how to separate the delicate emulsion from a Polaroid photograph and transfer it onto a new surface, creating ethereal, painterly images that embrace chance, distortion, and imperfection.

Through demonstration and guided experimentation, this workshop will cover the complete emulsion lift process, from image selection, materials, handling techniques, transfer methods, and preservation. No prior experience is necessary.

Participants will leave with completed emulsion lift artworks, practical knowledge of the process, and the confidence to continue experimenting with this unique photographic technique on their own.

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 will be provided.

About the Instructor: Ria Rajan (she/her) is an Intermedia artist and educator whose teaching emphasizes experimentation, material inquiry, and interdisciplinary making. Working across analog and digital media, she leads hands-on workshops that invite participants to explore experimentation with  image-making, and storytelling through accessible, process-driven approaches. Her workshops combine technical instruction with conceptual exploration, creating accessible, supportive environments for artists of all experience levels.  

The Presentation Album was developed as an answer to a question: how to create a simple album which can house photographs in an elegant embossed page without swelling the book? 

The album is very handsome, with pages made from a good quality card. Each page has an impressed panel to house the photographs; the finished panels resemble the impression of an etching plate. The pages are hinged together on the inside with thick paper strips, and a small amount of PVA is all that’s needed to hold it all together — no need for sewing. The album has cloth joints for strength and an attractive cloth cover, and like the Ideal Sketchbook, opens beautifully flat.

If time allows, students will tool their finished binding with creative lines and circles, using traditional finishing tools and both carbon and colourful metallic foils. 

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: Students should have some experience working with glue and paper/cloth; Bookbinding Core 2 (flat back case binding) or equivalent experience.

Materials to bring: All tools and materials will be provided. Students are also welcome to bring any of their own favorite bookbinding tools.

About the Instructor: Michael Burke (he/him) studied bookbinding with Dominic Riley and paper conservation with Karen Zukor. Michael lives in England, where he teaches bookbinding as well at events across the UK. Michael researches the structures of ancient and medieval bindings and received his Masters degree in the History of the Book from the University of London in 2011.

Michael is a co-founder of Book Camp, an immersive residential bookbinding experience which aims to teach new generations of binders.

Strong, elegant and pleasing to use, this structure is modelled on the nineteenth century artists' sketchbooks and journals, similar to the ones used by Wordsworth and Ruskin as they wandered across the Lake District to draw and write. It is an honest structure made simply and from high quality materials, opens beautifully and is very durable. It can be made at home with no equipment, just a few simple tools, and since it is not 'cased-in' requires very little pressing.

The pages are made from good cartridge paper, ideal for pen-and-ink drawing, pencil sketching or writing. Working from full sized sheets, we will fold and slit the paper to give a beautiful, feathery deckled edge. We will then sew the book with linen thread on strong tapes, and sew in a cloth hinge for strength. The book is rounded, for easy opening, but not backed, eliminating the need for a press. The case, or cover, is made from cushioned boards covered in strong natural canvas that can withstand all the hard knocks associated with going 'out into the field'. Time permitting, the cover is then tooled with carbon and gold to personalise this simple handmade binding.

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: Bookbinding Core 2 or equivalent experience preparing a textblock.

Tools/Materials to bring: None. All tools and materials will be provided. Students are also welcome to bring any of their own favorite bookbinding tools.

About the Instructor: Dominic Riley (he/him) is an internationally renowned bookbinder, artist, lecturer and teacher. He has his bindery in England, from where he travels across the UK teaching and lecturing. He spends part of the year teaching in San Francisco and across the USA. His work is mostly restoration and Design Binding, for which he has won many prizes in the Designer Bookbinders competition. He was elected a Fellow of DB in 2008 and is Patron of the New Zealand Association of Book Crafts. His bindings are in collections worldwide, including the British Library, the Grolier Club in New York and the San Francisco Public Library. In 2013 he won first prize, the Sir Paul Getty Award, in the International Bookbinding Competition. Dominic is a past President of the Society of Bookbinders. Dominic and Michael Burke are co-founders of Book Camp, an immersive residential bookbinding experience which aims to teach new generations of binders.

He has taught masterclasses in the USA, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, at the Centro del Bel Libro in Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and Canada.