The illustrations for Bead & Felted Tapestry Crochet were done on a Macintosh computer with MacDraw, Illustrator, and Photoshop, and the text was prepared with Microsoft Word. Quark was used for the layout. A CD with the layout was brought to Anderson Performance Printing in Cookeville, TN (931 528-1561). They color-corrected the photos and rearranged the pages for offset lithographic printing.

Pauline Gunter visually corrected the color on her screen (which is calibrated to match the press). Special software was used to layout the plates for offset printing / offset lithography, then Direct Plate technology sent the information to the digital laser plate maker (back center). A photo-sensitive aluminum plate was exposed, then removed and inserted into the plate processor (on the right).

Josh Selby adjusted the color saturation of each plate before mounting them on the Mitsubishi press.


Jeremiah Williamson readied the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black plates for the press. After printing, the cover plates were removed and replaced with the inside cover plates. Jeremiah placed the printed paper face-down in the press to print the other side. The blank paper passed through the various rollers of the press and emerged in full color a few seconds later.

Before running the job, Josh fine tuned the color saturation and the placement of each plate and made sure that the inside and outside of the printed cover lined up correctly.

The press sheets (printed paper) were mechanically folded twice.

Jared Houston cut apart the laminated covers.

A Mueller was used to collate a few of the signatures (book sections), then all of the signatures and book covers were collated, stapled, and trimmed on the same Mueller machine.

Josh Woods made sure the covers and signatures did not run out, quite a feat on this fast machine.

The collated book was stapled, then trimmed - all in a matter of seconds.

Geoff Pryor taped the boxes, then filled them with books - 40 to a case.

LINKS:
Carol Ventura's Bead & Felted Tapestry Crochet Book
Carol Ventura's More Tapestry Crochet book (also printed at Anderson Performance Printing)
Carol (Norton) Ventura's Tapestry Crochet Book
Tapestry Crochet page
Hand printing in China
Hand printing in Mexico
Hand papermaking in Mexico

Web page, photographs, and text by Carol Ventura in 2006.