Have you ever found a material you loved so much, but didn’t know quite how to use right away? This happens to me quite a lot. At the risk of sounding a little hoard-y, I’ll admit that when I see something I love, and I can feel I’ll use it someday — for SOMETHING — I’ll keep it around.

Such was the case with the body material I used in my new book Sea/Sky. The dense blue fabric mush was hiding inside some packing materials (thanks, IKEA!), just waiting for a reason to spend some time on my work table. I had been thinking about trying to make a non-traditional dos-à-dos (that is, a binding of two books into one binding — here’s one I made a couple years ago) and this *stuff* jumped out at me. You see, because the dos-à-dos shares a cover, it’s great for books that flip in the reader’s hands. When I thought of this fabric, it reminded me of both the sky and sea at once…which made it perfect for a book that could be both!

Seriously, check out this squishy, stringy, amazing stuff:

I bound three pieces of it together using a standard Japanese stab, and oriented one side to Sky…

And the other side to Sea…

Plus: tiny sea creatures!