Bookbinding

Last Tuesday we had Lucy Wilson come in to give us a fun little workshop on bookbinding! I have done book binding before and enjoyed it so was excited for this, especially since the last time I did it was about three years ago and I knew I’d have forgotten most of the basics.

In true classic fashion, I was late, so had to play catch up a bit, so it was a good job I knew a little bit of information beforehand. The technique she taught us was a nice basic one, that can be applied to any size really, as long as you get the measurements right!

I made an A6 sized book with a card front and back cover, and folded paper inside, giving me about 40 sides to write or draw through. The basic principal of this technique was to fold each sheet in half, put measured holes in each piece, and then sew them together, before finally gluing the spine together and pressing for good measure. The trickiest part of the process was remembering to go back on yourself, to the page below to bind those two sheets together, and then trying the loop at the end, but once you get into the rhythm of things it was quite soothing.

Lucy herself was a great help in the workshop; you can obviously tell she has a passion for binding her own books and she brought some great ones with her. She also gave us a quick demonstration on hardback bookbinding (which takes a bit longer and is a bit more complicated) that I might try out myself.

I’m quite proud of that little book so I’m definitely going to make more of them in the near future and experiment with the paper, cover etc. I’m going to use the ne I just made to jot down all my thought’s, because I’ve been told to stop bottling things up, so it will be my catalyst for release!