There was a text block of watercolor paper already prepared, with board covers to match, just sitting on my work table. I had made it months ago, while waiting for some loom repair or other. Yesterday I looked at it anew. I wanted to make a sturdy book with a black Tyvek covering.
On a piece of black Tyvek the size of a pillowcase, I machine stitched random lines of straight stitch, with an occasional "blossom" (my old Bernina makes nice blossoms). The thread I used was a spool of variegated rayon embroidery thread from India, rescued from the bottomless stash. I glued the stitched Tyvek to the boards; I was a bit worried that the PVC glue would seep through the little holes left by the machine needle, but that didn't happen. After an hour in the press, the covers looked like this:
The contrast between the matte black Tyvek and the shiny rayon thread is nice.
Endpapers of brown cover stock were glued in place. I especially love beautiful spines, and I found the white of the signatures too jarring against the blacks and browns. To tone down the white on the spine, I wrapped the signatures in brown lokta paper. Black waxed linen was my choice for the coptic stitching.
Now a glamour shot of the finished spine: