Book #358

Butterfly Stroke

I found another 3-section binding in Smith's book that I had never done before and here it is. If you are comparing, my result looks rather different than Smith's model in his book, but I think it is just that my sewing holes are farther apart.

Book #347

Flat Through Support

This is the third book in my current set of four. This time the flat support is actually pierced and sewn through. The appearance is a bit like a split tape, but this is much simpler.

Book #332

Bound Concertina Album

Today's binding is an album structure that utilizes an accordion for the spine. The valleys are bound together using sewing supports, and then folios are individually sewn to the mountains for the pages. It works well with the two-piece cover too - and I got that idea from the book "Cover to Cover" by Shareen Laplantz.

Book #312

Origami Wrapper

Today I have another bookish origami creation. I have printed a Chinese proverb on it that can be seen when it is opened. I found this structure in "Japanese Papercrafts," which also has several other wrapper, box, and envelope structures handy in the book arts.

Book #299

Sewn Album

The binding I made for today is a sewn album binding. This is another one that Zeier includes in "Books, Boxes and Portfolios".

Book #263

Multi-fascicle Chinese Binding

Today's book is another Chinese binding. As I mentioned yesterday, the paper twist binding was often used as a temporary binding and one situation that required temporary bindings, was when a written text was divided into multiple sections, or fascicles. Each fascicle could be bound using a paper twist binding until all the sections were ready. My example is made from four sections, each bound separately with a paper twist binding. The beginning of each section is marked with a small piece of yellow paper. The fascicles are stacked and bound together using a traditional Chinese stab binding. Chinese books with soft paper covers were stored lying flat on the shelf, in stacks, so the title of the text was often written on the edge of the textblock so it could be read more easily on the shelf.

Book #260

Label Binding

Today's book is another of Arregui's structures. She calls it the label binding, because the spine label is attached with the same cords onto which the signatures are sewn and it works really well.

Book #250

Hash Marks

This is a stitching pattern from Keith Smith's book Quick Leather Bindings, although I've used it here on a simple paper wrapper. It is a 4-section sewing even though it kinda looks like it might be only three. The cover is Saint-Armand paper, and the pages are all handmade paper that I made in my papermaking class as PBI earlier this year.

Book #219

Crossed Snowshoes

Today I attended a screen printing workshop which was really fun. I did a few different prints, including the red print on the cover of this book. I was not particularly happy with this print, but after I cut it up and turned it into a book cover, I like it more. The binding that I used today is another one from Keith Smith's book, and this is a 2-section binding that he calls crossed snowshoes. I modified it a little bit, if you are comparing, because I was not happy with the way he anchored the first two snowshoes. I found that his method made it very hard to keep the shape of the first cross and my little modification will keep them in position more effectively.

Book #184

Cross-Stitch

Creating the X pattern for this binding is just like doing cross stitch embroidery.

Book #183

Packed Raised Cords

With today's binding, I have officially reached the half-way point in my "365 bindings" adventure! As I showed yesterday, I made a French Door book with two different bindings. The French Door structure can be made with any binding really. So today I present another raised cord binding, but this time it is done with a packed sewing. (I should point out that neither of these techniques, packed and unpacked on raised cords, are used for exposed spine bindings normally; however, this book is quite small so the bindings and cover attachments are probably adequate to support the book blocks.)

Book #182

Raised Cords

Happy Canada Day! Today is a big day for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is July 1st and that means it is Canada's birthday, whoop! In honour of the occasion, I made a book featuring our flag for today's post. Secondly, today and tomorrow mark the half-way point in my "365 bindings" adventure. Half of 365 is technically 182.5 but that is not really a day...so Day 182 and Day 183 share the half-way celebration. My Canada Day book, therefore, also serves another purpose because it features two different bindings. It is a French Door structure, and as such, there are two book blocks sewn on opposite sides of a shared back cover. Today's binding is a standard raised cord sewing, as shown in the closeup photo above. Tomorrow I'll show you the other side!

Book #155

Italian Paper-covered binding No.1

The book I made for today is an example of a 16th-17th Century Italian paper covered binding where the signatures were sewn using a type of longstitch sewing through a primary wrapper then covered with a decorative secondary wrapper. I scanned and printed a woodblock design from that period and used it on my secondary wrapper.

There are a number of variations of this binding which I will show over the next few days. The models that I am making for these various Italian paper-covered, or limp paper case, bindings are based on information compiled by Maria Fred­er­icks, which she shared with participants at PBI in 2012.

Book #150

Roycroft Suede Binding

Today's book is a model of a traditional Roycroft suede binding, which was in use during the American Arts and Crafts movement. I learned this structure from Fran Kovac, based on the research done by Eileen Wallace.

Book #132

Ribbon-bound Album

Today's book is a photo album, with a ribbon binding. I used a piece of Japanese kimono silk for the cover on this particular album.

Book #121

Crossed Structure Solo

This is another of the bindings from Arregui's website. I have used this structure a lot and I may have modified it a bit from her original plan, but it is still essentially the same thing.

Book #112

Green Binding No. 2

It is Earth Day today! Do something good for the planet.

Today's book is another one made entirely from repurposed materials. Some time ago, I had to shred some documents that had been bound with these plastic coils. So I saved the plastic coils to see if I could use them again. Cut down to this smaller size, they work perfectly fine for a small notebook. The cover is made from a coffee cup that I flattened and trimmed. The pages are cut from paper salvaged from the blue bin. All materials repurposed and transformed into a handy little notebook. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Book #111

Green Binding No.1

Tomorrow is Earth Day, so over the next few days I will show a few of the simple bindings that I have used for making "green" books. The first is one that I did with a group a teenagers and all the materials we used were repurposed. The covers were cut from various food boxes and the pages were from a printer/photocopier blue bin where all the sheets were blank on one side. The only other thing we needed was something to stitch the pages, and we cut a plastic bag into strips and used the long strips of plastic to sew the book.

Book #101

Vs

This is one of the three-section sewings from Smith's book, simply called Vs.

These books are available on Etsy, here and here.

Book #83

Crisscross Binding,
formerly known as the Secret Belgian Binding

My book for today is an example of the lovely Crisscross Binding technique (which we used to call the Secret Belgian Binding).

If you are interested in reading more about this type of binding and its name, I have posted about it before here and here.

This particular journal is for sale in my Etsy shop.