Book Binding

The book I wanted to make for our grandson as a journal was a multi-step process.  I watched Sea Lemon on YouTube for several of those processes.  The first video on her Book Projects playlist is one I have not watched.  The making of book cloth, creating a text block by sewing signatures, making a hard casebound book, and more, are what I watched.  Again and again!  Plus other book binders like Kristi Warren.  If you want to make your own sewn book, you will want to watch these videos.

Because of the length of the process, I will only make a few comments.  AND because I am such a novice.  I will show you some errors I made, too.

This is the finished book.  If the photo was a little wider you would see that the front edge is way not perfect...in fact there is about an extra quarter inch on the front edge.  Next time it will be better.  If there is a next time.

Measuring the pieces of book board, or in my case, chip board, is very important.  Placing the book board on the book cloth is also VERY important. I did not totally grasp the placement, which had to do with the measurement issue, but eventually I made it work.  Well, I put the book together and found a big space between the spine and the text block.  Not good.  So I cut the text block out and re-set it.  Now there is a much wider margin at the front edge of the book but I think it will not be too much of an issue.

Here you can see where I tried to make the end papers work after cutting out the text block and re-setting it. After THAT I found another sort of matching end paper in my stash and used it.  Since it was also not the right size, I added ribbons to cover the overlap. Kind of hokey, but it worked.

Here you can see how badly I miscalculated the text block placement.  You can also see the handmade book press in operation.

As I was going through the book just prior to putting it in the mail, I found this glitch in the sewing.  One thing you learn when making a book is that EVERY SINGLE PART OF THE PROCESS needs to be so carefully done.  I suppose it is a miracle that with 12 or 13 signatures in the book, only one of the stitches should have been re-done.  At this point, I am not sure if I was able to fix that error. If I had noticed it earlier, I could have used an awl to hide the thread in the spine.

Well, it is done.  It did give me joy to make it.  It was a great learning project.  It has been so many years since I created a casebound book that I am pretty happy it came out as well as it did.  It just makes me happy to make things for those people I love.