Japanese bookbinding

Some of you are presenting physical paper artefacts such as lyric books, poetry anthologies etc. Bespoke, limited edition and handmade merch can be interesting, creative and lucrative.

A cheap and very doable way to present paper based work is to bind sheets together. In college, I would have brought in all the equipment for you to use and run a workshop face to face but we are in lockdown so here is an alternative!

What you need:

• The sheets of paper you want to bind
• Thread of some sort (wool, string, cotton...)
• A pokey thing to make holes (needle, screwdriver, awl....) and something to protect whatever surface you are using like a wad of newspaper or a piece of wood.
• A needle (a thick embroidery needle is ideal but you can just feed the thread through if the holes are big enough and your eyesight is good!)

Have fun, don't injure yourself and I look forward to seeing some results! Email me if you get stuck.

Further tutorials in different styles: https://www.ibookbinding.com/bookbinding-styles/japanese-binding/top-10-japanese-stab-binding-tutorials-on-the-internet/

Loads of different styles of stitch