There was a weekend book binding class last weekend, she’s a new tutor and does workshops in her house. It was pretty reasonable price, and while I make a lot of books I signed up. For two reasons, a) I needed to get out of the house and have some me time and b) I’m a self taught book binder and I felt sure there was a lot to learn.
And I learned loads, the tutor was very precise, I tend to be a bit more slapdash, so being forced to work more slowly and be more controlled was a good experience (although I never got into the crafty flow state with it)
We made two small books, the smaller one is only about 4" tall, and it has folded and stitched signatures, its only about 1/3" thick but I still put headbands and a book mark ribbon in. The larger one is about 6" tall and that was made from separate pages, also stitched-I’d never done this before so it was really useful
The books are actually pretty perfect, because I (was forced to) took a lot of care in the making.
Both. The folded pages are stitched through the folds as normal, and the spine is reinforced with glue and a type of fabric called shirting is used on the spine.
The other one with non folded pages, individual pages are stacked, glued, then small holes are drilled through the stack and stitched, then reglued and fabric applied.
Wonderful! It’s nice sometimes to be forced to slow down and really focus on a task, even if it isn’t your typical style. The results really speak for themselves!
They look really professional!! Very nice. Sometimes taking a class with a strict teacher can be really good for the development of our skills, because they don’t let you get away with taking shortcuts.
I am interested in starting to learn how to do book binding. Do you have any advice on where to start for a complete newbie with no special equipment? Thank you!!!
Well now that you mention it, I made a basic guide for a friend. It’s very basic equipment, it’s a long video, but the idea is that you can follow along.
Watch with paper, dental floss and a darning/tapestry needle and you’ll be able to follow along. That will make the book block. For the cover you just need card and fabric and PVA glue. I tried to keep it as low tech as possible!
I use cheap watercolor sketchbooks, as the resulting pages are nice and heavy and paints/pens won’t bleed through. And you can use the card back of the sketchbook to make the cover
