Category: Bookarts

Packing Paper Book
packing paper Coptic bound with silk thread
4 1/2 x 6 inches, 10 signatures of 5 leaves each (50 pages)

I got an e-mail from someone on Friday, asking me about the Coptic stitch tutorial I wrote. She wanted to know if there was any way to make the outer rows into full knots instead of half knots. If you’ve gone through the tutorial, you’ll have noticed that in the end rows, the needle enters the next signature, instead of going back into the same hole it came out of. That makes the end rows of stitches look a little less than pretty. It’s something that\’s bugged me, from an aesthetic viewpoint, but it’s inherent in the binding, and I wasn’t bothered enough to try to find a different method. The binding, as it is, is nice and easy and sturdy, which is my main concern. I toss these books into my bag and carry them with me for months at a time, so I know this binding method is strong and durable.

However, I’m all for improvement! So, I had another go at trying to think up an easy way to make all the rows of stitches identical. Usually, you would use one long, uncut piece of thread for the whole binding, working up and down the spine. This time, I treated each signature as a separate entity. The first signature is attached to the cover in the usual manner, but when you get to the end of the first signature, you wrap the thread around the stitch above it, then re-enter the end hole. Tie off the thread. Re-start the next signature, from scratch, etc., etc., etc. This way, the first and last rows of stitches are making a full pass around the stitches above them and are re-entered into the hole they originated from, forming a full, pretty knot instead of a half, ugly knot.

So, this was just a quickie experiment to test out how feasible this flavor of binding would be. The photos are not great, because the light was going and the wind kept blowing the pages around. At some point, I’ll give the binding another try, and get better pictures. I’m not sure how much I’ll use this binding method, though, because the extra knots at the beginning and end of each signature are a little unappealing. It also takes more time than my usual method, because of all the extra knotting. Maybe using something less slippery next time would help. Silk was a bad, bad choice for a lot of reasons.

Also, I found my iron! Of which I actually have two, because I temporarily lost my old one and had to replace it. Not that I iron very often. I don’t even own an ironing board. The only thing I use it for seems to be paper. It came in handy today, for flattening the packing paper I used in this book. Reduce, reuse, recycle, right? I can’t stand throwing away brown kraft paper, even though it’s not archival. I adore the stuff. And this stash of it is extra nice. It’s very thin and strong, with a hard, smooth texture (like sandwich bags, not grocery bags).