Disclaimer:
- It's dark here. The pics all have garish flash…sorry.
- I didn't clean up my desk. So yeah, it's a hot mess.
Okay, here we go.
See that there bit of fabric? That's the spine for my book. Normally you'd attach the covers to the spine before you sew in the signature(s), but I was waiting for some gel medium on my covers to dry so I kinda did it in reverse order.
That's the top view of my signature…see how the pages are folded in half?
You need to punch holes (evenly spaced) through all of your pages so you can sew them into the spine. See the holes?
Use waxed linen thread to sew the signature into the spine. I used the running stitch. Look in the center of the spine above & you'll see the black thread. I left the tails of the thread to the front so I can attach some bead & fibery goodness to them later. For more details on bookbinding stitches, I recommend any book by Shereen LaPlantz.
Here's the back cover for my book.
Sew the back cover onto the side of the spine. See how this would have been easier if I had done this before I sewed in the pages? Well, I don't do things the easy way sometimes because I'm impatient. Repeat with the front cover.
Voila, the pages are now in a complete fabric cover. I left enough room in the spine so that I can sew in at least one (maybe two) more complete signatures (which I will work on at a future time…room to grow).