If you’ve made it this far, you are already half way there. This step is the most time consuming of all, so if you make it through the end you are as good as finished ;)

This binding technique will be sewing through the fold, where the signatures of the book are folded and stitched through the fold. Then the signatures are sewn and glued together at the spine to form a text block. The final result should be as durable as that of a hardbound book, and you should be able to open the book completely flat, at least until you apply glue to the spine. Afterwards it wont stay flat open by its own weight. I always glue the spines (Step 5 of this howto) because the text block of a sewn through the fold book is not very secure and some signatures could come loose over time, especially when you make as little as three stitching rows.

First I’ll show a sketch of the steps to be taken. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it yet (I know I wouldn’t: drawing was never my forte) . Hopefully with some explanations and more photographs everything will be crystal clear. Click on the images to show a bigger version. You’ll be needing the extra detail.

Sketch number one shows what you should do with the thread to sew the first two booklets. Here the thread is represented as a black line. The upper half would be the part that runs through the inner side of one of the booklets. The bottom half would be the part running through the inner side of the other booklet. The little green squares indicate the points of entry, the holes on the fold of each booklet, used to get the thread from the inner to the outer side of a booklet and viceversa.