Georgina Fairfax
Why bind your own books?
There is a particular pleasure in a notebook that opens flat, sits comfortably in the hand and carries the unmistakable signs of having been made by someone rather than something. Shop-bought notebooks are perfectly serviceable, but they rarely invite you to keep them for thirty years. A hand-bound journal, stitched with linen thread and covered in a sheet of marbled paper you made yourself, has a character no factory product quite manages.
The good news is that the craft is far more forgiving than its finished results suggest. You need a kitchen table, a few pounds of materials and a willingness to fold paper slowly. Begin with a single notebook rather than an ambitious edition, and let the second one be better than the first.
Gathering your materials
Most of the traditional kit is inexpensive, and several items are probably in the house already.
- Paper: 100–120gsm uncoated cartridge or laid paper for the text block. Avoid anything glossy. Check the grain runs parallel to the spine, so the folded sections sit crisply rather than buckling.
- Thread: linen bookbinding thread, 18/3 or 25/3, run over a block of beeswax to stop it tangling and to help it grip.
- Needle: a size 18 tapestry needle, or a curved bookbinder's needle if you can find one.
- Bone folder: for creasing folds and rubbing down paper. The back of a smooth wooden spoon will do at a push.
- Greyboard: 2mm board for the covers, cut with a sharp scalpel and a steel rule.
- Covering: book cloth, or your own marbled paper backed with tissue, plus a length of mull (scrim), PVA adhesive, wheat starch paste and headband tape.
- Weight: bricks, heavy boards or a stack of old books. Two chopping boards and a pair of G-clamps make an excellent press.
Folding and sewing the signatures
A signature is simply three to five sheets nested inside one another and folded in half. For an A5 notebook, fold A4 sheets across the short edge, running the bone folder firmly along each crease. Press the stack under a weight for an hour. Eight to ten signatures give a pleasantly substantial journal.
Mark your sewing stations with a template and a fine awl: two tapes set evenly inside the spine, with kettle-stitch holes about 2cm from the head and tail. Sew with a French link stitch, passing the needle around the tapes and linking each section to the one below. At each end, a kettle stitch locks the sections together. Keep the tension even — firm enough that the spine does not gape, loose enough that the thread does not cut the paper. Finish with a reef knot, and tuck the thread tails beneath a stitch.
Brush a thin coat of PVA along the spine, add the strip of mull, and leave it to dry under weight. The text block should now hold together as a single, pliable object.
Making the case and covering it
Measure the spine width from the sewn block, then add two board thicknesses and about 3mm for the covering material and movement. Cut two boards for the sides, each slightly taller than the text block, with a 3mm square at the fore edge. Lay boards and spine strip on the book cloth with a 10mm gap either side of the spine piece, and glue them down.
Trim the covering with 15mm turn-ins, snip the corners diagonally, and fold them over, working the cloth with your bone folder to keep the edges crisp. Paste in your endpapers — a marbled sheet is traditional, tipped in with a thin band of PVA along the fold — and place the text block into its case. Press the whole book for several hours, ideally overnight.
Paper marbling at the kitchen table
Marbling is the part that most captures people. A shallow tray about 4cm deep is plenty. Make your size with carrageenan powder dissolved in water and left to rest overnight; roughly a tablespoon to four litres gives a workable, slightly syrupy bath.
Papers need a mordant before floating paint: sponge on a solution of alum and water, then let the sheets dry flat. Acrylic or gouache colours thinned with water float beautifully on the size. Add a few drops of ox gall to help them spread — too much and the colours turn thin and grey, but you will learn the balance within a sheet or two.
Drop colours from a brush held close to the surface, then draw a rake or a toothed card through the bath. A single pass gives the traditional stone or getgel pattern; a second pass at right angles makes nonpareil; a stylus swirled through the combed bath produces the French curl. Lay the mordanted paper down gently, starting from one corner, lift it in a smooth motion, rinse it in clean water, and hang it to dry.
Pressing, finishing and living with it
Nothing improves a handmade book more than patience. After covering, press the finished volume between boards for a full day so the boards dry flat and the spine settles. A length of headband tape tucked inside the spine at head and tail adds a professional touch, and a strip of ribbon as a marker costs nothing in effort but feels generous in use.
Store your notebooks away from damp and direct sun. Marbled papers are fairly robust, but they will fade in a bright window. Should a cover mark, a barely damp cloth and a light touch usually lifts it without disturbing the pattern.
The first book is a learning piece; the third or fourth is the one you hand to a friend. Keep your offcuts, keep your notes, and above all keep the small mistakes — a slightly wavy endpaper or an uneven stitch is exactly the heritage character that drew you to the craft in the first place.
