Longstitch with Hardcover Tutorial, Part 1

Longstitch with Hardcover, Part 1

So! I've been experimenting with making a new (to me) style of longstitch binding, and didn't find much in the way of tutorials for it on line. And I believe that when you see a gap, you should fill it. So today I'm posting the first piece of a tutorial to make a longstitch/linkstitch journal with hard covers, with integrated endbands. That's a lot of words, huh? But like the name of the blog says, this is binding made COMPLICATED. :D But I went out of my way to ensure this project could be completed without any special tools or expensive products, though! I'm pretty sure most of the essential materials should be lying around any home, whether you're into crafts or not.


Your end result will look similar to this:


If any of the directions are unclear, please let me know with a comment or something. This is my first time making a tutorial, and taking the pictures was tricky and my camera isn't really up to the task. And it's possible I might have forgotten to document a step. Also, since I didn't want to assume knowledge of binding, I cover a lot of steps in detail, so this tutorial is pretty LONG. You don't need to do it in one sitting! One session can easily be the cover, while the next is the sewing. In fact, I think I'll spread this out over three posts. That saves me a lot of work tonight! In any case, here we go!

Materials:

So the bare minimum things I think you need are here in this image.

You need:

around 28 sheets of paper, folded in half, and nested into signatures of four sheets each for a total of seven;

a piece of stiff board for making the covers - I used the back of a drawing pad, but a cereal box works;

cover paper - either fancy nice paper or as simple as this cut up grocery bag - strong is better than thin;

some embroidery thread - if you don't have any, it's less than a dollar per skein;

a needle - if not a bookbinders needle, try a tapestry needle, which is easy to find and less than three bucks;

an awl for piercing - mine was two bucks, but if you can't find one for cheap you might try a thin nail & hammer;

a metal ruler;

a craft knife, x-acto knife, or scalpel - something sharp for cutting paper. Or scissors if that's all you have;

white glue - I used regular old elmer's glue-all, since archival quality isn't necessary today;

scrap paper for gluing on without screwing up your work surface or your book;

a pen for marking where to cut, pierce, etc. and to write down your measurements

(let me say that now: WRITE DOWN YOUR MEASUREMENTS. CHECK THEM TWICE. Small mistakes can snowball into real pains in the back if you're careless while measuring.)

and finally - something like an old phone book so you can pierce without scarring up your table.

anyway. There's a few pieces of optional materials you can get too which make life easier, but you CAN survive without them - I did for a long time!

The white item is a bone folder. It folds, creases, scores, and tears paper. Super handy! The metal bit there is a needle threader - vital for me, with my clumsy sausage fingers! And the ugly lump is a hunk of beeswax -  waxing your thread makes your stitches stay tight and keeps your thread tension even - it also keeps your thread from forming knots when you draw it in and out of the signatures. These items collectively probably cost about eighteen dollars - two for the threader, nine for the wax, seven for the folder. But you might find them for less or more. (Incidentally if you are buying wax, look for beeswax for batik - it comes in great big one pound lumps which cost a FRACTION of the price per ounce than say Lineco beeswax for binders).

Let's make the cover! 

The first thing to do, after you fold your papers to make signatures, is measure and cut your boards. 

For this project, make your board height equal to that of your folded paper, but make the width about 1/8 of an inch greater. After you have everything measured and marked (remember to doublecheck!!), 

 you can take your straightedge, lay it on the line, and use it as a guide to score the boards.

Then you can use that scored line as a guide for your craft knife. It's easier to make the cut with several lighter passes than with one extremely hard cut - it makes it MUCH less likely for the knife to jump or swerve, which makes it less likely for you to injure yourself! Take it slow and easy. Rushing will only lead to mistakes. (Jeez, look how blindingly white my hand is in this photo! I need to put the books down and go outside.)

You should end up with two rectangular pieces the height of your paper, and slightly wider - they'll look kind of like this!

Next we're gonna stick them to our cover paper. In this case, mine is a piece of shopping bag. The size you need is determined by a few factors - the size of your boards and the thickness of your spine. I hope that the pictures can clarify this, as I'm not sure exactly how to word it. Fullview this image so my chickenscratch notes might be legible.

But basically the paper should be the size of your board PLUS two inches in length AND width, PLUS the width of the gap between the boards - which is the thickness of the spine, plus 1/8 of an inch. That's tricky, I know! If you can't wrap your head around that, just make the gap an 1 1/8 inch and hope for the best - you'll find out pretty soon if it was too thick or thin. 

You can figure out the thickness of your spine, by the way, by just loosely grasping the signatures and measuring them. This photo doesn't capture that well because one handed photography of a hand in action is nigh impossible.

So - mark the center of the page, and then mark where the board will be - if you're following my 1 1/8 gap rule, they'll sit about 9/16 of an inch to either side. Then trim the paper so there's an inch of paper to the left and right of each board. Make sure they're centered height-wise, too, so there's an inch of paper above and below.

Oops, this picture is rotated. Shoot. I'll edit that later. But you see the markings, I hope.

 Now it's glue time. This gets messy, so work on scrap paper and maybe keep a damp paper towel handy to clean your fingers. After you use a sheet of scrap, fold it and throw it away as soon as you're done with it - leaving gluey paper laying around is an easy way to ruin your book cover. Switch to fresh paper for each piece you're gluing and don't worry about waste - this is less wasteful than starting a new cover would be!

 I like using a bit of scrap board to spread glue. A cancelled credit card works too, or you can use a brush if you're willing to risk trashing it. Note: I used WAY THE HELL too much glue on these. Half this much glue would have been plenty. The point is you want a coat which is even and a bit thin, but not so thin it dries before you lay the board on you paper.  Oh damn it - I forgot to take two pictures. Sorry. You take your boards and flip them glue side down onto the paper, and then press firmly. Then, flip the whole thing over, and use the heel of your palm or a bone folder to smooth out the wrinkled paper.

Next step, flip the page over again. Cut the paper at a fortyfive degree angle (or so), about two board thicknesses away from the corner. See the board I'm holding there? That makes it exactly two thicknesses. Do something just like that.

You're left with something like this.

And now I find I missed two more steps. So I'll describe them here. Glue all around the edge of your boards and the top and bottom of the spine, and then turn the sides over, smoothing them carefully. Then turn the top and bottom over - try to keep your corners neat. Then cut another piece of cover paper, this one measuring about half an inch narrower than your wrapped cover, and about half an inch shorter. Cover it with glue and lay it down on the inside, covering the remaining exposed boards and spine gap - you'll wind up with something like this! 

Here's some attention to detail - using your bone folder or a popsicle stick or your fingertip, get in there and smooth out the spine, making sure you press the edges nice and tightly so you have sharp corners where the boards meet the spine. This will be the hinge of your cover!

Also, smooth out the paper inside, just like the outside. If there's been any warping, this should help straighten it out. Now let it dry for awhile! I let mine rest for an afternoon before I went back to sew. 

I'll continue the tutorial tomorrow, where we'll pierce the cover and boards and then sew the sections to the cover. And on the third day, I'll walk you through sewing the endbands, which I personally find the most challenging aspect of this task. Which is why I'm saving it for last, of course. See you tomorrow!