"if you WANT the book to lie flat, you can do an accordian bind, which will also allow for expansion to be made without fanning, but you have to be certain you place the envelopes evenly through out the pages, or it will be lopsided."

I recently did a journal with an accordion binding, the accordion folds are about 1/2 an inch, it has 7 signatures in it, each sig. is placed inside every other accordion foldm thereby creating the spacers. each one is added AS it is coptic sewn into each fold. this is hard to describe here and i wish i had a pic so you could see it, the coptic stitch is decorative as well as functional, there are 10 holes in each signature. holes 1,4,7 and 10 (by the time you finish sewing create a braid look across the spine, 2&3,5&6, 8&9 have a long stitch where you run your needle through the stitch of the previous signature creating a herringbone effect. it is beautiful, and doesn't stretch open too far like an accordion book would, it opens like any other coptic book, and you can put stuff any where you want too and no lopsidedness. when closed the spine is a little bit thicker than the opening side, and once you fill it with envelopes and stuff it will have an evenness on both sides. sheesh i hope that makes sense. you can do any coptic stitch you want though (accordion/coptic is the main point here) the first and last accordion flap is where you would glue or stitch your covers. i got this idea from Making and Keeping Creative Journals by Suzanne Tortillot (IMO- not worth buying) if youre fairly experienced with the mechanics of coptic and kettle stitching, i'd suggest going to your local big bookseller and looking at the pic on page 81 if you want to have a looksee, it's gorgeous. I'm doing something similar with my daughters baby shower....passing the journal around to everyone to write advice about parenting in....great idea....i may do the envelope thing too since, on the invitation, i ask people to have something written already, for their convenience and to not be put on the spot with some brilliant writing, ya know.
below is "kinda" what the spine looks like with the x's all connected into a herringbone, it holds the accordion well allows for expansion but not too much, i like for a book to open normally, not stretching out to 12 inches.
hope this helps.

deanna

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