Tatted Bookmarks

I start each morning, after I've taken the ever-increasing number of medications the doctor has me on, with four Bible readings. For that purpose I have four bookmarks, and my husband reminded me the other day that I should photograph them.

So here they are. The two on the left are from Tatted Bookmarks by Lene Bjorn. I particularly like her dimpled ring pattern and have made and given it away several times. The Seahorse is another of my favourite patterns. It is by Mark Myers and can be found in Animal Bookmarks by Diana Stevens. I've also made this one in blues and greens as a gift for a friend. The one second from the right is one of Mary Konior's patterns, from Tatting with Visual Patterns, a book that was a godsend to me back in my early days of tatting when the Dover books, with their complex written patterns, were about all I could get!

 And here is the Bible they keep my places in. I'm partially sighted and need a large print Bible. For some reason, although you can buy really attractive leather-covered Bibles in normal print, the ones in large print always seem to come in institutional plasticised covers that, at any rate to me, feel most unpleasantly sticky, even when brand new! So I took my Bible and covered it in some leather. It was an upholstery leather remnant that I had bought to recover my footstool. I had just enough left over to cover the Bible as well.

For anyone interested it is really easy. Smear the book cover well with craft glue and smooth the leather on to it. Use a ruler to push the leather into the ditch beside the spine. Trim the leather leaving a generous turn over all round. Cut the extra leather at both sides of the spine so you have a bit like a bookmark hanging down. Then, assuming this is a hardback that you are covering, push the strip into the gap between the spine and the pages, glueing it into place. Then you can glue the rest of the extra leather inside the cover, mitring the corners. Glue the blank first and last pages in place to hide the leather turn-over, and leave to dry. The cross is simply cardboard, covered in a scrap of left-over pig-skin, and stuck on.

(Apologies to any vegetarians reading this, but after all, the method would work equally well with imitation leather or suede.)