I'm always inspired by the materials I use, and I love linen! It has a wonderful tactile quality, strength and subtle colours, and it's also one of the most sustainable materials available.
Bookcloth is sometimes confusingly called linen, when in fact it's likely to be cotton, or a synthetic material like rayon, or a blend of both. It's either paper-backed or filled with starch, which stops adhesive coming through the fabric when it's used as a book covering material.
To make linen fabric into bookcloth, I back it with a lightweight Japanese paper (Kosuke), which is quite beautiful in its own right, using a traditional Japanese wheat starch paste.
I use my linen-bookcloth to make Linen Sketchbooks and Linen Concertina Watercolour Sketchbooks with Chiyogami.
