
Sometimes I make a book for no other reason than it’s something I like to do. I like folding papers and sewing them together. I like working out the details: the color and weight thread to use, which folds to make, what papers to use, what sewing pattern to follow.

I have quite a number of heavy weight black paper strips left over from last week’s school residency. This paper has a linen-like finish, it feels good in my hand, and it is rich and beautiful. I wondered what kind of small book I could make. The strips are 4 inches tall and 26 inches wide (about 11 cm x 68 cm). I folded a number of accordion pleats from the center out, left enough unfolded to so I could fold in a cover.
I have stacks of interesting papers which I like to mix up when I’m making a book. I used white, beige flecked, gray, graphing, and soft white papers, cut to 4″ x 6″.

At each stage of construction this book looked good to me. This is a reliable sign that the finished product will have some charm.
After this book was sewn together it wanted to pop open all the time. Here’s something I’ve never seen anyone write about: often books don’t seem to want to stay shut when they’ve first been made. A book like this should be placed on bookshelf, fully closed and between other books, and a week later that same book that was popping open now remains shut. It’s like the papers have to get used to the idea of having been transformed into a book.
The cover of this book is two thickness of paper, created by folding over the ends. I wanted the fold to stay shut, but didn’t feel like gluing it down, so I sewed it down, and the folded over paper became a pocket. .
There’s a pocket on the other end of book, too. I sewed one of the accordion flaps on to the cover to make a narrowe pocket.
Over the last few days I’ve made 5 or 6 of these books, trying to work out what looks best to me. The book on the left is where I started. First thing to change was the sewing. It just didn’t look good to me. I had seen as description of this linked binding and wanted to try it out, so that’s what I did. I like this change in sewing (though it used far more thread: 45″ of 4 ply waxed linen) , but it seemed to me that the signatures were too thick, so the next book the signatures were made from 5 papers rather than eight (5 papers = 10 leaves = 20 pages, and since there are three signatures, that makes this book 60 pages long). All good. But then I wanted to see if liked a more colorful spine, so I tried out purple. I’m not sure whether I like the black or the purple better, so now I’m stuck, and will stop here for now. Which is good thing because I need to get ready for teaching tomorrow.
It looks great, Paula. I love seeing how you changed it as you went along.
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Thanks Candy. It’s that process of finding the sweet spot in the design that keeps things interesting. I’m sure that you know exactly what I mean.
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Hi Paula, they all look good from my perspective, although I wonder if a finer waxed linen or perhaps some stranded cotton may enhance the spine. Must find some black paper in my stash.
I taught A4, stab bound albums with my small, monthly, Sunday afternoon group. They have done their covers and we’ll play with the decorative bindings next month. Cheers from “down-under”.
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I know what you mean about a finer thread. It’s actually what I started out with (though it’s not pictured.) What I didn’t like about them (and I tried stranded cotton as well as a finer linen) was that ,in this case, with the white paper under the black paper, too much of the white showed through around the thread at the sewing stations. A thicker thread seemed to hide more of the white, which, of course, I would probably be the only one to notice.
I would love to see what your group is doing with the stab bindings! Send photos, esp of the simple ones. I love seeing the solutions (of paper choice, book size, sewing station placement) that different people work with!
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Paula, I really like the little black books!
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I like both the purple and the black spines.
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