I do love including nature in a lot of my work, and one of the simplest ways to do this is by adding a stick to your binding – yes a plain old stick! It adds texture and a tactile element to your book cover, which gives it so much more interest.
After sharing some photos of the booklets I bound using the stick binding method, I was asked to share how I did it, and so out came this tutorial. It is a bit finicky to start off with but it does get easier as you go along! This is also another nice way to bind single pages together.
Supplies
These are the supplies you will need:
- Single sheet papers to use for signature
- Book covers
- Embroidery floss/bookbinding thread
- Awl/pokey tool, clips, scissors
- stick the same length as the height of your book
Steps
And here are the simple steps you need to follow!
Assemble your pages and covers. Clip or clamp your pages together so they don’t shift around while you are binding, then place them into your covers. Make sure that the edge of the pages is lined up flush with the side of your book covers that will be bound with the stick.
Position your stick where you want to place it along the binding, a couple of centimetres from the edge should be good. Then, mark where you want to pierce your holes with a pencil (I would suggest a minimum of three to hold the stick in place).
Pierce your holes through the two covers and the text block, then prepare your needle. Begin by going through the top hole from the back cover, through the text block and the front cover. Place your stick in position then loop the thread around it, going back in through the hole you came from. On the back side of the book, move to the next sewing station and repeat, until you have looped around the stick through every sewing station. Once you have reached the bottom, repeat the process in reverse to ensure your stick is well secured. Depending on the stick’s size you can loop around two or three times, as long as when you finish you are back at the sewing station you started off with to tie off your thread.
If you feel your stick is still too loose, you could add a dab of glue, but, if you keep the tension throughout the process you should be ok!
If you would like to see the full step by step tutorial and you are more of a visual person, like me, then enjoy the full video here:
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