Bookbinding HOWTO Step 4: Sewing

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.

The cross indicates the point where you’ll be making a knot, and the little grayed-out areas -at both sides and in the middle- correspond to the area where the thread runs through the outer parts of the booklets on its way from one booklet to the other.
The green squares correspond to the pierced parts of the booklets, so the thread from the outer part of each one of them should be aligned and forming a straight column. Assuming you initially inserted the needle through the middle hole, it would run by the inner part of the booklet to a hole in one side. From there, it would get out and into the next booklet, then to the middle hole, out again and into the first one. There you would make the first knot, go to the one free hole left, get out of the booklet and into the next one. Make sure the thread is tight before you tie the knot because this is what will be keeping the booklets together and you don’t want them to wiggle. Also make sure it isn’t too tight, because you could easily tear the pages through the fold. This happens especially when your booklet is thinner than the standard five pages. You’ll get the hang of it as soon as you begin, so there’s no need to worry.

The next sketch shows nothing special. The thread was already running through the inner part of the second booklet, so you only have to get it out though the central hole and into the next booklet. There you tie the knot (marked in red) and you’ve already completed the basic process. The rest of the booklets will be appended to your growing book one by one.

The third and final sketch shows how to continue. The first part of the image remains untouched with its black thread. The second part will mark the thread in red, though you should remember it is the same and uncut piece. From the last knot you simply get the thread out through the middle hole, and then get it into another booklet from the central line again. The entry point to the third booklet is marked with a blue cross in the middle. The thread would go from there to one side, out of the third booklet and into the second, run for the whole length by the inner side to the opposite hole, back to the third booklet and there you would tie another knot right in the middle -again, the blue cross-. By now you should already know how to continue from here.

OK. Now that we’ve seen the theory, let’s look at some actual pictures of the process.

The Tools

The tools are nothing special: a straight needle and thread. I’ve tried using a curved needle to increase the speed but it turned out to be more of a hassle than anything else. The thread is a normal 100% polyester strong white thread. I haven’t tried Nylon or other materials, but I’ve read that some people even use metallic wires for specially heavy pages, normally for art books and so. The thread shouldn’t be too thick, as this will also determine the thickness of the spine you’re sewing. If you click on the image you’ll see that a single thread -not double- is used in the process. This is also to prevent the book from being excessively thick.

I normally cut a piece of about 1.5 meters, thread the needle and start sewing from there. Whenever I run out of thread I simply cut it and tie a new piece to my two fragments instead of threading the needle again. The resulting knots are hardly noticeable once you’re reading unless you’re actively looking for them, and it’s much faster this way.

Sketch 1

Sketch 2

Sketch 3

Click to enlarge any image. Each picture has a comment. Feel free to ask if there’s anything that isn’t clear yet.

Update: I’ve just noticed that I forgot to warn you about something important. You should allways remember to stitch a blank booklet at the beginning and at the end of your book. I normally use only two pages (four once folded) for each one of theese. You’ll be needing the extra booklets unless you had many disposable pages at the beginning and/or the end, because you will have to use some pages once you add the covers. I’ll tell you more about that in a future post, once we get to the final and seventh step: Covers

Update: Check out the complete bookbinding-howto series.