Sketchbooks

I was very busy last year, so much that I didn’t have the time to post as much! There was a lot of bookbinding, and here are some of the books that I worked on.

For sketchbooks I like to do binding styles that allow the book to open and lay nice and flat for drawing. These are an exposed sewing style of binding where you construct the covers, then sew the sections through the cover, and make decorative patterns with the stitching.

These covers were a good, the finished size of the book was just over 8″ x 6″, and used a lot of my favorite papers on them. I was following the instructions from a book, Quick Leather Bindings, where leather was used for the spines, but book cloth works just as well. I like to used linen and linen type fabrics for my book cloth, it just feels nice.

I wanted these books to be fun, so I used even more fun papers on the inside of the covers. To strengthen the spine, and to make it look nice, you carry the book cloth all the way around the covers. You do get a couple of seams in the inside of the spine, but once you get the book all bound you don’t really notice it and I made sure that the edges of the cloth were well glued.

Once the covers are made, you have to plan out the stitching pattern. I plan them out on graph paper, some I got from the book and others I figured out myself, and then I transferred them to the sections and the spine of the cover. I made three thick sections of Strathmore 400 drawing paper for each book, which is enough to make some nice patterns. I punched the pattern right though the spine of the book and sewed the sections in with waxed linen thread.

I learned a lot making these books and I can’t wait to make some more, they are fun and (relatively) easy to make!

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