Book du jour - Suturing

Submission to a juried book art exhibition to be held in Canterbury. I researched the different kinds of stitches that surgeons use, and the materials they use - catgut, silk, etc - including the various types of needles (chiefly cutting, used for closing up skin, and tapered, used on deeper tissue) - which come in different shapes - and knots, and which of these tools and techniques are used in combination. That's just a tiny bit of what surgeons need to know: the result of it all, the scar, is the tip of the iceberg.

I used the "secret book" structure, to be displayed with the top open, so that you'd be looking into "the body" and see the cellular structure of tissue. But what sort of tissue? Keep it simple - skin. (Not that skin is particularly simple!) 

Looking at images of cells on the internet, I used the inks at hand to come up with some semi-mythical skin tissue -

Only four were needed, one for each page inside the book. Or just one would do...

And then, after much dithering and procrastination, a change of plan. Put drawings of tools and materials in the centre -

As for the outside, eight pages were available. The title could be on the envelope or box that the book would go in. Are there eight different types of wound closures? How different could they be?

In the end there was room for six, stitched onto calico and joined to the paper with iron-on fusible web -

The ends were sewn together with a simple interrupted stitch and a mattress stitch -

The title wasn't clear till the end. I'm using "Suturing" as it's short and to the point and "serious" enough for the exhibition - but  "Stitch like a Surgeon" is a lot more fun.