9 Handmade Books and What I Learnt Making Them

 I have been wanting to learn some new book structures recently. I feel that I have become very reliant on the Secret Belgian Binding technique and although I like that it is hardcover with a protected spine (but also has decorative stitching), I know there are so many other beautiful book structures out there that I haven’t tried yet.

My main goal of this exercise was to find a structure that worked for multiple pages, either as single signature or multiple signatures, but was still decorative. I made a series of ‘experiment’ books, first drafts that weren’t particularly neatly made, but were designed to give me an idea of how they would look when assembled and if they would work for what I wanted.

I learnt the value of taking a bit more time to make the book properly – you can’t get an idea of what something will look like if you don’t make it how it is supposed to be made! – and now have a better idea of how some of the book structures I have seen photos of, come together.

The first book was my attempt at a recreation of a book I’d seen on Pinterest, but without me fully appreciating the importance of why the book had been made the way it was! I covered the cover boards in my painted papers and made the spine piece out of black card. The text block was stitched together using a combination of French link and kettle stitches.

The problems I encountered are two-fold. One, I should have glued the signatures together after binding, because although they were held together tightly at the top and bottom, the French link stitch was too loose in the middle.

Two, I have since discovered this style of binding that I was supposed to be making is known as ‘Dos rapporté’ binding, created by Benjamin Elbel (bookbindingoutofthebox.com) and the shape that the spine piece is folded into is the most crucial part of the whole thing and I missed it! I folded the card piece in two places, rather than four, and as a result, the spine couldn’t flex. This has led to it becoming partially unstuck from one side. It is possible to make a book structure like this, but by only gluing the card onto the cover boards right at the outer edges of the card, allowing the spine to move.

The next book I made had an accordion fold spine, with signatures stitched into the valleys and a card casing around the spine. Whilst this looks nice from the outside, the accordion is not held at all and so the pages ‘fall out’ of the cover. This is not a practical choice for what I wanted, but has potential for future projects. In an attempt to find out if I’d done something wrong, and if there was a better way to secure the book, I have found a few other methods that would perhaps suit better, which I will try out in due course.

The next book was my attempt at a hardback cover where all the pieces are covered in one piece of paper. I have tried doing this before, with minimal effort, because I have never been able to judge how big a gap to leave between the cover boards and spine. This attempt, whilst not perfect, was much more successful.

The stitching in this case was a bit trickier. It was hard work to stitch through the holes in the spine, particularly when they had already been stitched through, and even more so towards the end when there was a lot of tension.

The only downside I found was the large gap between the two signatures inside the book. This is obviously a feature of the book and without risking having the holes too close on the spine, there isn’t much that can be done about it. It is a feature of the book. Adding more pages into the signatures might work, but then that runs the risk of not letting the book to close properly.

Before committing to making a hard cover version of this binding, I wanted to first try this stitch out to see how it looked. It is a single signature chain stitch binding.

I am glad I tested it first or else I would have been very disappointed. I realised that I should have been using a thicker thread (I was using a 2-strand linen thread, but a 6-strand embroidery thread might have been better), but more crucially, I realised that due to the nature of chain stitch, there needs to be a lot of looseness in stitches to give form to the chains, but that means looseness in binding, and that isn’t really what you want in a secure binding!

This next book was my hard cover chain link attempt. I used thicker thread and did a combination of running and chain stitch. The running stitch held the binding tight, which allowed the chain to be purely decorative, and was much more effective.

I also wrapped the cover boards in paper and used a piece of fabric on the outside and inside of the spine, to hold it together. I really liked how this looked, particularly with the contrast in colour.

Something else I have thought about changing when making this book again, is the number of pages in the signature. Although the spine could accommodate the number of pages I used and still lie closed, I didn’t really like how the book looked with such a thick signature. I’m sure this is mostly just personal preference, but there is something about it that just looks messy. I was using 140gsm weight cartridge paper, so I think lighter weight paper might look better, and still allow for more pages.

I tried something different for my next book. I decided I didn’t want to do a hard cover as I’d been finding those difficult to stitch through, but I wanted something more robust than a soft cover, so I decided to try using Tyvek paper as a spine. I stuck a piece to the two cover boards and covered it all in fabric. I then also partially covered the front and back covers in handmade paper. Inside I used one piece of paper to cover both boards and spine.

I used a long stitch along the length of spine that is held down at the other holes along the spine (I’m not sure what the name of this stitch is).

I really love how this book turned out. My only concerns about it are that the fabric I used was a bit thin and it was easy to see the difference in colour of the Tyvek and board, which is why the handmade paper was necessary. Also if I want to use the handmade paper again, it needs more contrast between the fabric and paper colour to make the book ‘pop’ (like in the previous example when I used black cover boards and light fabric on the spine).

This next book was a bit of a disaster. I’m not sure if this is a fault of mine or if the book is just supposed to look a bit messy!

I used a piece of card, with slits cut into the spine, which I then stitched back and forth through, adding signatures individually. This did a lot of damage to slits where needle passed through and I found it very difficult to make the rows of stitches for the signatures lie an equal distance apart on the spine.

What I find the most frustrating about this is that I just can’t see how this is suppose to look neat! Should I have used thicker card? A smaller needle? I think it is fair to say I won’t be trying this binding again!

The next binding that I tried, was buttonhole stitch. I also found this one quite fiddly to do and hard to get the spacing of the stitches correct. It didn’t help that I messed up when making the hole in the first instance (I should have cut diagonally across the space I was cutting out, instead of round the edges, so that I created tabs which could be folded back, which would have made the edges of the hole a lot neater and more robust.

I do like the idea of this binding, particularly if decorative papers (or contrasting papers) are showing through the hole, and maybe it would be more successful if I had made a hard cover instead, but I found the binding quite loose which gave the book a lot of movement, and I’m not sure how to make the binding tighter or if that is just the nature of it.

Although this is the last book I’m talking about, this was actually the first book I made. It was the book that started my desire to learn more book structures, as I was fairly disheartened by this first try. I really liked how the book looked from the examples I’d seen, but my attempt wasn’t nearly as good.

I think I definitely need practice to work out how best to fold the tabs before the final assembling, because getting sharp folded around the stitched pages was too hard. I also think that the paper I used on the cover wasn’t interesting enough (I used tea dyed card which had quite a flat colour) and I should have used something with more contrast to make it ‘pop’.

Although most of these books ended up looking a little ‘rough and ready’, and they all need refinement to a greater or lesser degree, it was a lot of fun trying them out. I always see books that I want to create for myself, but I don’t prioritise making them, so taking a few days over the Christmas break to focus on book binding was really worthwhile. A few of these will binding will be added into my repertoire of binding techniques, and some I think I’ll abandon as ‘not for me’, but I think the most valuable thing is actually making them. It is always hard to visualise exactly how a book is going to look and feel, or how the structure is going to fit together, until you are making it or holding it in your hands.