Day 34/365

I’m in the thick of production for the One of a Kind Show, which is just around the corner.  So I thought it appropriate to share a bit about my process, about what it means to create a book by hand, from scratch.  So here’s a mini step by step photo series to explain.

Once the pages are cut and folded by hand, they are collated and stacked in nice, neat, tidy piles, called signatures.  (If you look closely at almost any book you have handy, you’ll see at the top of the spine the pages are divided into groups like this.  The exception are ‘perfect’ bound books, which aren’t perfect at all but rather simply glued on the ends, so no signatures).

After marking where to sew each signature, I use this as a template to punch holes, making it easier to sew the book.

You can see the holes in each signature line up nicely with each other, creating a lovely and symmetrical pattern in the sewing along the spine.

This is just the first part of handcrafting a book; sewing the text block (group of signatures) into a case binding.  After this I would attach the text block to the case, and voila – the book is done!