These little guys are letter-sextodecimos (16 book pages per page of letter sized paper), which works out to about 2"x2.75"!
For this year's Tiny Books Bang, someone typeset the first two stories of NyonSuperstar's "Predator, Prey" series, and I was lucky enough to be chosen to bind it!
The typesetter leaned into the vampire theme with an appropriately spooky title font, and some cobwebby corner decorations:
I followed suite with some endpapers from a Halloween themed paper pack:
These are my first silk endbands, in the appropriate red and purple for transformers:
I gave the text block graphite edges (a new skill learned at this year's Renegade Retreat). And the cover paper is from the Take It or Leave It table at the Retreat:
Titles on the spine were applied with the hot foil-quill:
For those interested, I’ve also included this fanbinding in the Renegade Publishing Fanbindings collection on AO3, located here.
The typesetter and I both have our copies. However, I've fallen down on the job of reaching out to the author. As you can see, I've made three copies (the hard part!): I will see if I can track them down on the Social Medias and make an offer. I always hope to make authors feel appreciated by their fans!
Quick little fanbinding of The Steve Rogers Problem, by @relenafanel . Go read the fic and heap praise on it, for it is wildly funny and also has tumblr-style sekrit identity shenanigans. Fantastic typeset by @catspawbindery , my contribution to this creative effort was to choose vaguely-Captain America- inspired colors as Steve(actor) plays Cap(fictional character).
Fanbinding of The Steve Rogers Problem - Binderary 2025
The Steve Rogers Problem by relenafanel
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: Mature
Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Words: 41,521
I gifted this typeset to caughtdaydreaming for the 2024 Renegade Typeset exchange. However, this series has also been in my bookmarks for quite a while, and so i jumped at the chance to capture it in a book! I worked on binding these during February, when Renegade celebrates Binderary (an event for book binding similar to NaNoWriMo or Inktober).
In the series, Bucky spends some time on social media, including Tumblr. So I thought it would be fun to have each chapter start framed by the Tumblr new post screen:
The scene breaks are the logos from various social media sites, pulled to coincide with the time of posting (2015-2017).
Once I decided to create the book, i decided to run with the Tumblr theme, so of course the fabric I picked was "tumblr blue", with pearlesent paint for the title to reflect the Tumblr logo. The endpapers are a reminder of everyone's favorite crabs.
I wanted to try out several new-to-me techniques for this bind.
1) This was my first time using my guillotine to trim the edges* of the textblock (no more sawtooth!), which allowed my to try adding color to the edges of the text block for the first time.
2) These are my first sewn-boards bindings (a technique where the boards are glued into card folders already sewn to the text block. This is definitely an easier way to get covers on a text block, but doesn't allow room for endbands, and doesn't cover the very back of the boards).
3) And my first time using my cutting machine to cut out a stencil for the cover!
As usual, I wanted to gift a copy of the book to the author, and the author has received their gift! Thank you @relenafanel for this lovely Stucky story, I hope this reminds you are on the regular that you are appreciated! Thank you for your contributions to fandom!
For those interested, I’ve also included this fanbinding in the Renegade Publishing Fanbindings collection on AO3, located here.
I was contacted late last year for permission to typeset my silly baby robots story for a fanbinding. I was somewhat aware of fanbinding and have an admiration of the art of bookbinding in general, so I happily gave my blessing. Hey, if someone likes my writing enough to commit an act of craftwork about it, I say full steam ahead. In my opinion it's the highest honor a work of fanfiction can receive.
Fast forward to now. @catspawbindery has gifted me this gorgeous tome.
Y'all.
Sweet shiny Primus is this thing gorgeous.
Just look at the quality and care that went into this. It's so well made and wonderful to hold.
I had (am still having, when spacetime allows) so much fun writing this series, despite/because-of its cracky premise, and seeing it manifest as a physical object is delightfully surreal. I'm going to find a prominent place to display it in the room where I do most of my writing so it can spur me on. Hopefully someday right next to it will be the first hardcover of Scoundrel.
(Don't worry, she is a very gentle pup and no damage occurred.)
Amyda, it's beautiful. Thank you so much. I can't stop grinning.
Finally getting my act together and reblogging this :)
It has been delightful to see this post crossing my dash this week, surprising me every time because I'm not in the reblog chain yet XD. Definitely a pick-me-up everytime it happens!
It's even more beautiful than the initial pictures showed! /weeps because of Amyda's tremendous skills/ Like, this only just hit me that that typeset is PHYSICALLY A BOOK. jfc, this feeling is amazing. Congrats to the author on a fantastic story, and gotdamn Amyda; I've got no words.
I was contacted late last year for permission to typeset my silly baby robots story for a fanbinding. I was somewhat aware of fanbinding and have an admiration of the art of bookbinding in general, so I happily gave my blessing. Hey, if someone likes my writing enough to commit an act of craftwork about it, I say full steam ahead. In my opinion it's the highest honor a work of fanfiction can receive.
Fast forward to now. @catspawbindery has gifted me this gorgeous tome.
Y'all.
Sweet shiny Primus is this thing gorgeous.
Just look at the quality and care that went into this. It's so well made and wonderful to hold.
I had (am still having, when spacetime allows) so much fun writing this series, despite/because-of its cracky premise, and seeing it manifest as a physical object is delightfully surreal. I'm going to find a prominent place to display it in the room where I do most of my writing so it can spur me on. Hopefully someday right next to it will be the first hardcover of Scoundrel.
(Don't worry, she is a very gentle pup and no damage occurred.)
Amyda, it's beautiful. Thank you so much. I can't stop grinning.
Finally getting my act together and reblogging this :)
It has been delightful to see this post crossing my dash this week, surprising me every time because I'm not in the reblog chain yet XD. Definitely a pick-me-up everytime it happens!
Fandom: Transformers - Generation One
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: Gen/Multi
Words: 70,616
For the 2023 Renegade Typeset exchange @moonlight1314 gifted me the first story of the New Paradigm series back in December. It is lovely and colorful and includes the author's artwork as well!
However, I have immense fondness for the entire series and wanted all of it in one place. So I typeset the rest of the series and began plotting my first tête-bêche book.
My whole design was sparked from these amazing papers I used for the endpapers. I wanted to reflect on rolly-poly baby robots, and circles/star-bursts are a good way to do that.
From there I was able to find a lovely green fabric with dots and spirals to make bookcloth for the cover. These are my first covers with cutouts. Definitely a lot of work, but I like the effect. Something new in my skillset!
The tête-bêche style allows each typeset to shine on it's own, as each separate typeset still gets to start the book.
I wanted something with the feel of circuity on the cover, and also wanted to bring back the circles and indicate which of the covers to start with. This is my second cover using HTV: it turned out very well, but I am still learning a lot with every attempt!
This was also my first attempt at renaissance chevron endbands, which I like a lot! There was still the irritating task of securing the core to the text block, but that's done up front and then it's just sewing from then on. I really like the look, and maybe next time I'll be brave and choose more high-contrast colors to show of the pattern more.
Thank you @wearmanyhats for this delightful story! I'm so glad you are enjoying this fanart!
Mission Complete: Fan Fiction Writer Appreciated!
For those interested, I’ve also included this fanbinding in the Renegade Publishing Fanbindings collection, located here.
To follow his dreams, Jazz offers his virginity and himself to anyone willing to pay. His buyer, Prowl, has a lot of loneliness and a kink for virgins, but dreaming isn’t something he’s capable of. Yet.
Fandom: Transformers - All Media Types
Rating: Explicit
Archive Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationship: Jazz/Prowl
Characters: Jazz, Prowl, Ricochet, Barricade, First Aid, Sky-Byte
The Perfect Song by dragonofdispair
429 pages, letter-quarto/ 50,061 words
Accompaniment: Companion Pieces to The Perfect Song (Adagio, Coda, Cadenza, and Famous) by dragonofdispair
72 pages, letter-quarto / 4,751 words
The Perfect Song was requested as a bind during our local Renegade Exchange 2024 event. My giftee mentioned they liked quartos and also blue, and so I had the first inklings of a design. My giftee also mentioned they wouldn't mind additional gifts, so I decided to bind the rest of the series as a separate book, mostly because i thought it would look cool and then i would have a reason to make a case too (corral all those books together).
Photos and more discussion under the read-more!
First up is The Perfect Song! I have been wanting to bind a chonky book, and while I didn't reach maximum chonk, The Perfect Song is a respectable size and satisfyingly hefty in the hand. This book is a variation of the bradel binding style, which supports a thicker book well. I ran with the musical theme: the endpapers have musical notations, the text breaks are a treble clef, and I used the written music for Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream as the background image for chapter titles. I chose the font for titles and dropcaps because it reminded me of a musical scale. The blue bookcloth is homemade using a faux-suede fabric: fuzzy texture!
The black and while endbands were meant to invoke a piano keyboard: I'm not quite sure I got there, but they look classy regardless!
Next is the rest of the series (which I called Accompaniment for the purposes of rounding up the series in a second book), and it uses all the same themes. I like the cohesive look, and really, why mess with a good thing? This is a much slimmer book, bound in a different style from The Perfect Song. This is a modified conservation pamphlet bind.
For both books I used HTV to put a treble clef on the cover, and for The Perfect Song I had enough room to title the spine as well.
I wanted to make cases for all three sets of books (one for my giftee, one for the author, and one for myself). I ran with the same theme and materials, so nothing surprising there, but I think the books in their cases look really snazzy!
I'm very satisfied with how these books turned out! And I am thrilled to be able to gift a copy to the author! Sharing fandom is wonderful experience for me, and I hope some fanart let's the author know how much I appreciate that they shared their stories.
There was some discussion on the Renegade discord about seeing more first-try books, so not only the intimidatingly perfect books are shown. Along those lines, I thought I'd discuss some of the issues I had while binding these 5 books.
I think the moral of this story is that everyone makes mistakes, all the time, everywhere, and the another excellent skill to have is improvising ways to hide/improve your book design one things have gone sideways.
I like to work in batches of books: if I make myself a book, I like to ask the author if they want a copy as well. That way my book acts as the first-time through and hopefully I make all my mistakes on my book, and give the author something that looks better!
Photos and more discussion under the read-more!
So, I mentioned that I wanted my black and white endbands to give a reminder about piano keys. In my first attempt I actually tried to space the threads like piano keys (white, white, black, white, black, white, white, etc.). My hope was really cool piano key endbands! My fear was that it would like like it didn't know how to alternate black and white threads.
I was able to vary to width of the threads on the endband, but really my fears were realized. This is the bottom endband of my personal copy, and if i weren't impatient I could have this out on a practice text block!
My next mistake was when I start to to case in. I managed to cover my case with bookcloth before I trimmed the sides down to fit the text block. The cover overhung the textblock by almost a half-inch at the front! This was super upsetting! I stopped and took the time to cool down and do something completely unrelated, so I could clear my mind and think up a solution.
The solution was surgery!
I literally cut off the front edges of the cover to have a more acceptable overhang. And obviously I couldn't leave a raw edge uncovered, so I chose covered the edges with pretty papers.
I chose the put the red down first so the music paper on the cover didn't bleed into the music paper endpage on the inside of the book.
And then obviously I remembered to trim the cover for the books for my giftee and the author!
My final big mistake was made while assembling the boxes. The first book box I made for Binderary back in February I remember as being very straighforward. So of course I didn't review the instructions as thoroughly as I could have. I ended up trimming the fabric turn-ins in the wrong direction, and so the interior of the box just looked atrocious. I solved this problem with the application of more paper!
You will notice that one of the boxes has a paper border around the open side. Again, this is the box I kept for myself :)
So! Most problems can be solved once you are calm and have time to think. Take a break, talk to your friends, get some ideas, and come back to the project later.
And also remember that perfect is the enemy of done! Little variations show this is a handmade work, and it is precious and satisfying just the way it is. It is still a book!
Maybe this mistake is the opportunity you need to bring in another of your hobbies? Maybe your should crochet a fancy border on your cover, or sculpt a mushroom to make your book 3D, or pour some resin and make a window! Make books!
To follow his dreams, Jazz offers his virginity and himself to anyone willing to pay. His buyer, Prowl, has a lot of loneliness and a kink for virgins, but dreaming isn’t something he’s capable of. Yet.
Fandom: Transformers - All Media Types
Rating: Explicit
Archive Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationship: Jazz/Prowl
Characters: Jazz, Prowl, Ricochet, Barricade, First Aid, Sky-Byte
The Perfect Song by dragonofdispair
429 pages, letter-quarto/ 50,061 words
Accompaniment: Companion Pieces to The Perfect Song (Adagio, Coda, Cadenza, and Famous) by dragonofdispair
72 pages, letter-quarto / 4,751 words
The Perfect Song was requested as a bind during our local Renegade Exchange 2024 event. My giftee mentioned they liked quartos and also blue, and so I had the first inklings of a design. My giftee also mentioned they wouldn't mind additional gifts, so I decided to bind the rest of the series as a separate book, mostly because i thought it would look cool and then i would have a reason to make a case too (corral all those books together).
Photos and more discussion under the read-more!
First up is The Perfect Song! I have been wanting to bind a chonky book, and while I didn't reach maximum chonk, The Perfect Song is a respectable size and satisfyingly hefty in the hand. This book is a variation of the bradel binding style, which supports a thicker book well. I ran with the musical theme: the endpapers have musical notations, the text breaks are a treble clef, and I used the written music for Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream as the background image for chapter titles. I chose the font for titles and dropcaps because it reminded me of a musical scale. The blue bookcloth is homemade using a faux-suede fabric: fuzzy texture!
The black and while endbands were meant to invoke a piano keyboard: I'm not quite sure I got there, but they look classy regardless!
Next is the rest of the series (which I called Accompaniment for the purposes of rounding up the series in a second book), and it uses all the same themes. I like the cohesive look, and really, why mess with a good thing? This is a much slimmer book, bound in a different style from The Perfect Song. This is a modified conservation pamphlet bind.
For both books I used HTV to put a treble clef on the cover, and for The Perfect Song I had enough room to title the spine as well.
I wanted to make cases for all three sets of books (one for my giftee, one for the author, and one for myself). I ran with the same theme and materials, so nothing surprising there, but I think the books in their cases look really snazzy!
I'm very satisfied with how these books turned out! And I am thrilled to be able to gift a copy to the author! Sharing fandom is wonderful experience for me, and I hope some fanart let's the author know how much I appreciate that they shared their stories.
Binderary is once again almost upon us! For the folks at Renegade Bindery, February is a month where we focus on making books, similar to NaNoWriMo for writers and Inktober for artists.
This is my accountability post for Binderary 2024! Below are my preparations, my goals, and new techniques I’m going to try. Check it out under the cut:
My Preparations:
- 7 finished typesets, quarto-letter sized. I’m also hoping to get these printed out and folded before February 1.
- Lots of research on pamphlet binding!
- A little bit of research on box making/cartonnage!
My Goals:
- I want to bind each of these typesets in a different style of pamphlet binding.
- The 7 typesets are documentation of my conversations with authors I’ve worked with over the past year. I want to archive these before the get lost in the morass of online stuff, because glancing at an author reaction to a book I’ve make is a great pick-me-up! Archiving includes making sure my posts and the author’s stories are in the Wayback Machine at Archive.org.
- Someone suggested I made a box to keep these guys in, and I have not tried any box making yet. These should all end up roughly the same height and width, so they should all fit in one box! So one (1) box by the end of Binderary.
- If I survive all of that, I have a typeset I received from the Renegade Typeset Exchange 2023 that I should get started on! We’ll consider this a stretch goal.
New Techniques:
- I have several pamphlet binding techniques I want to try: 2 section pamphlet with cover, one sewing; stab binding (tortoise shell) with a Z-fold cover; button hole stich; concertina binding; stich pattern on the spine (which I believe is a variation on long stitch); conservation pamphlet for 2 sections and 3 sections. These are from both the Kevin A Smith books on glueless binding and also a couple of DAS videos.
- I have not tried cartonnage at all! I do have a fairly simple process laid out in the book by the Hollanders (yes those Hollanders) “Introduction to Bookbinding and Custom Cases”.
- If I make it that far, for my exchange typeset I want to try a cover with a cutout!
I will update at the end of February to let you know how it goes!
The end of Binderary is almost upon us! Here is my accounting!
I managed to bind all 7 typesets and made a slip case! I'm very impressed with myself 😎 Photos behind the "read more".
2 section pamphlet with cover, one sewing:
You can see where the cover-cardstock is folded in the center, and each signature sits in a valley. The signature and cover are all punched at the same time and sewn together, so there's no corresponding fold to deal with on the outside.
Stab binding (tortoise shell), with a z-fold cover:
The sewing pattern for tortoise shell was surprisingly easy, and stabbing was not a big deal with only 8 pages to get through. I did not leave enough room in the inside margin to account for this binding style though, some bits are a struggle to see.
Buttonhole stich:
Definitely an art binding, rather than something that would hold up to wear and tear. It does lie nice a flat when opened, and you can almost flip through it like a more traditional book.
Concertina binding:
Surprisingly difficult to get all the spine folds folded evenly! I even measured! Because of the folds, it ends up being much wider than many of the other pamphlets.
X pattern on the spine:
Pretty fun! I am very intrigued to try more long-stitch projects. This would work even better with thick signatures.
Conservation pamphlets:
The sad story here is that I made the 2 section conservation pamphlet, fully expecting to move on to the 3 section binding, when I realized that I used two of the sections from my three section typeset… so there are actually two of the 2 section conservation pamphlets, one of which has a third signature tipped on in the back 😅
I really like the effect with the endpaper around the signatures and then a matching pastedown on the cover. It looks a little fancy! I'm keeping it in mind for later!
And finally, the slip case:
Much easier than I thought it would be!
All together now:
I did make headway on some bonus projects, but nothing so far as casing in like I was hoping at the beginning of the month. Good thing there's lots of time left in the year!
Binderary is once again almost upon us! For the folks at Renegade Bindery, February is a month where we focus on making books, similar to NaNoWriMo for writers and Inktober for artists.
This is my accountability post for Binderary 2024! Below are my preparations, my goals, and new techniques I’m going to try. Check it out under the cut:
My Preparations:
- 7 finished typesets, quarto-letter sized. I’m also hoping to get these printed out and folded before February 1.
- Lots of research on pamphlet binding!
- A little bit of research on box making/cartonnage!
My Goals:
- I want to bind each of these typesets in a different style of pamphlet binding.
- The 7 typesets are documentation of my conversations with authors I’ve worked with over the past year. I want to archive these before the get lost in the morass of online stuff, because glancing at an author reaction to a book I’ve make is a great pick-me-up! Archiving includes making sure my posts and the author’s stories are in the Wayback Machine at Archive.org.
- Someone suggested I made a box to keep these guys in, and I have not tried any box making yet. These should all end up roughly the same height and width, so they should all fit in one box! So one (1) box by the end of Binderary.
- If I survive all of that, I have a typeset I received from the Renegade Typeset Exchange 2023 that I should get started on! We’ll consider this a stretch goal.
New Techniques:
- I have several pamphlet binding techniques I want to try: 2 section pamphlet with cover, one sewing; stab binding (tortoise shell) with a Z-fold cover; button hole stich; concertina binding; stich pattern on the spine (which I believe is a variation on long stitch); conservation pamphlet for 2 sections and 3 sections. These are from both the Kevin A Smith books on glueless binding and also a couple of DAS videos.
- I have not tried cartonnage at all! I do have a fairly simple process laid out in the book by the Hollanders (yes those Hollanders) “Introduction to Bookbinding and Custom Cases”.
- If I make it that far, for my exchange typeset I want to try a cover with a cutout!
I will update at the end of February to let you know how it goes!
The throne of Iacon's Primes is draped in golden chains. The glitter hides how strong they are--and how impossible to escape.
Fandom: Transformers - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up
Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationship: Megaton/Optimus Prime
Characters: Megatron, Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Ravage
Words: 3,710
I typeset Gilded Chain for the 2023 Renegade Tiny Book Bang, way back in August. Another member claimed the typeset and bound me a fabulous tiny book. However, while all of that was going on, I was also struck with a vision of a book in gold chains. It took me a while to puzzle out how to make this happen, but here we are now. This is now the second copy of Gilded Chain I have sitting on my shelf!
Here are some exterior shots. I embedded the eyepins in layers of thin cardboard, so they were sunk down into the covers instead of above/below/beside:
The endbands match up well with the chains despite being thread:
With a name like "Gilded Chain", I had to go ham with gold every place I could fit it in, which also includes the endpapers, the frontispiece, and the interior title:
On the inside I wanted to continue the them of ostentatious luxury, so the dropcaps are very elaborate. And the textbreaks are thematically appropriate chains:
So, this is a tiny book, letter-octavo sized. I have a terrible time telling how big are books in photos, so I'm experimenting with some comparisons:
Obviously the ruler is most accurate, but the shell is aesthetically appealing :)
I'm thrilled to have pulled of this cover! There was a lot of fucking around and finding out. @sroloc--elbisivni has their copy and has graciously allowed me to share with everyone online. Thank you wonderful author! I greatly enjoy this story, hopefully a bit of fanart tells you how much!
Ok, I see folks out here putting up shelfies and round ups of their accomplishments this year, and by golly by gosh imma do it too!
So! I made 15 books this year! That feels like a lot, especially since I started making books last year. Here are the books I bound this year:
In the very bottom/back there, I have my crochet patterns, a single copy for myself at letter size. The half-letter books are A Year in Toussaint and Mind Over Matter, for which a made a copy for myself and another for the author (5 books!). Then come my quarter-letter books A Day in the Life of Dr. Raphael Esquivez and Incendiary, both of which have a sibling homed with the author (9!) And then the little octavo-letter is Toy Soldiers, of which I made three total copies for myself, the typesetter, and the author (12 books 😮). And finally, another octavo-letter which I can't share yet, because although it has reached the author, they have not been able to take a peek at it yet (15! 15 books, mwa ha ha!).
I am so impressed with myself!
Additionally, I typeset another couple of octavo-letter sized books, and other bookbinders from Renegade Bindery bound them for me!
These are The Kaer Morhen Book Club and Gilded Chain! I am so delighted to have these tiny fellows on my shelf.
All together now:
You can find details of the binding of all these books on my book binding blog: catspawbindery
And finally, a shelfie for all the books on my shelf:
An excellent year for book binding all the way around, I can't wait to keep going in 2024!
Fandom: Red vs. Blue
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: Gen
Relationship: AI Program Epsilon | Leonard Church & Agent Washington
Words: 136,261
Mind Over Matter is actually the fic I worked on for the Renegade Exchange in 2022, so I had worked with @kineticallyanywhere while getting the typeset into good shape. Even then I had thoughts about what I would do to bind it: I'm not in the fandom, but it caught my attention and I was puzzling with it. And of course I didn’t have time during the holiday season of 2022 to actually bind the story.
Here are some shots of the interior:
I wanted to reflect Epsilon/Church’s many disparate personalities, but also how they all (and Wash) worked together throughout the story. They are stronger together than apart. And I was wandering the internet (as one does) and found these amazing journals covered in woven ribbon fabric. And so that’s how I wanted to show the different personalities coming together, creating something greater. And more recently I found another video, showing the weaving of the ribbons over some heat’n’bond , which saved my life, because my original plan was to individually glue each ribbon to the cover and weave over top. I would have died!
Due to the nature of the ribbon-fabric, I wasn’t able to use my normal casing method. I used the in-boards-three-piece-bradel method, discussed by DAS here. This may be the sturdiest book I’ve ever made! The spine was a bit tricky, but everything turned out in the end. I look forward to using this method again in the future.
I’m very pleased with how everything turned out! kineticallyanywhere has their copy, so although I’ve very late for my original plan to deliver the book by Fan Fiction Writer’s Appreciation Day (FFWAD) on August 21st, I’ve still succeeded in sharing good fandom feelings with the author. Which is my big payoff in the end regardless :)
For those interested, I’ve also included this fanbinding in the Renegade Publishing Fanbindings collection, located here.
Behold! @overlyenthusiasticfictionreader recently did a binding of my fanfic Toy Soldiers and sent me a copy (cat for scale).
I love that bookbinding has become a thing in fandom, and I love seeing the books people produce, so it's especially delightful to see one of mine being bound and to receive a copy. It came very nicely wrapped and was so tiny and cool -- it's so neat to me that the binding information is included, and that this is one of those hobbies where people share that kind of thing to help each other out and document the work they've done.
Amyda has a post about the binding process here, and a post on AO3 here; I'll be reblogging the tumblr post separately in a bit. Thank you again!
[ID: Four images; the first shows a wrapped package, sealed with wax and tied with rainbow ribbon, sitting on my kitchen table; the next image shows it resting on a Captain America blanket next to Dearborn the tortie, who is crouched and sniffing it (she was fascinated). The third shows the book unwrapped, a small red volume with Toy Soldiers stamped in gold on the cover, which also features fireworks on it. The fourth image is a close up of the book, still on the Cap blanket, showing off the cover.]
So this year is Renegade Bindery's first Tiny Book Bang. Typesetters formatted typesets to be any size smaller than a quarto, and binders later bound up those books!
I made two typesets for the Bang this year: the Kaer Morhan Bookclub by Jack Ironsides, and Gilded Chain by Sroloc_Elbisivni. I am delighted by both books I received from other binders! I learned so much from seeing the bindings that other folks completed! I felt very connected to our fan community, crafting across fandoms and international borders!
But this post is mostly about the book I bound for the Bang: Toy Soldiers by Copperbadge!
@mourningmountainsbindery made a delightful octavo-sized typeset of this story, "lightly comic-book themed" as described by the typesetter. There are three books because I bound for myself, my they typesetter, and I always like to tempt the author with a book if I can. Both mourningmountainsbindery and @copperbadge have received their books, so I am free to share!
I tried to sneak in as many fun things as I could. Here we have some shiny foil on the title page.
The endbands are red/white/blue for Steve and red/gold for Tony.
I was incredibly fortunate that 4th of July was right around the corner when I shopped for materials. I found very appropriate cloth for the bookcloth cover ;) And the endpapers I have had for a very long time (a decade?!), so I was definitely glad to find them a home!
Thank you mourningmountainsbindery for the lovely typeset, thank you copperbadge for a lovely story! And thank you mods for all the hard work you do in the background.
The Kaer Morhen Book Club by @jackironsides, typeset by @catspawbindery . Amyda has received her copy, and so has the author! so here we goooo
I JUMPED at the chance to bind this - agonised for a while about whether or not I got my first choice in claims - as this was a fic I already know and love and I had IDEAS for what to do with it. Amyda's typeset was so inspiring, including a frontispiece and medieval-esque fonts, and since the fic features medieval romance novels (chivalric, really) I thought it would be fun to try to emulate the binding of the novel Starcrossed Love as described in the fic:
He waves an octavo at them. The cover has beautifully marbled paper, and black leather enclosing the spine with gilt decorations pressed in.
And there it is, with its dark calfskin binding, a single star stamped in gold on the spine.
This is an octavo binding (though printed on A4 paper, so a very small octavo - an A7-sized book), it has a leather spine (animal: unknown), marbled cove papers, and a star foiled onto the spine with a hot foil pen. for endpapers I chose Japanese Chiyogami paper as I'd stumbled over this particular pattern by accident and thought both the colour scheme and pattern matched the medieval vibe. the headbands are green and gold embroidery floss.
I struggled a little with the leather - which I've never worked with before - so my own copy (the first trial copy) didn't come out as well, but lessons learned and the typesetter's and the author copies came out beautifully.
my copy, using a different, thicker leather for the spine, resulting in no visible hinge at all:
it doesn't look bad, but it's not the vibe I wanted and I had to do a lot of infilling to account for the thickness of the leather since I didn't have any leather paring tools.
the author's copy is a different colour scheme for two reasons: I sourced the leather from the leather scraps bin in Shepherd's, London, and the pieces were very small. I was only able to find two pieces large enough to cover the spine of an A7 (I'd brought along a dummy to test the scraps against) and the two pieces were different colours. I also didn't have enough of the medieval-esque Chiyogamy for a 3rd set of endpapers so I chose a wildly different but striking Chiyogamy paper to match the colours of the leather and marbled paper. the headbands are dark blue and pale blue embroidery floss.
I love this book sitting on my shelf! I had ideas of what I thought might make a good looking book for this story, but I love seeing what someone else came up with too! and ashmouthbooks hit it out of the park!
It is such a rewarding experience to have someone else make something tangible with my typeset. I may have to rethink my stance on how involved I want to get in this year’s Exchange, because getting more books sent my way is very tempting.... >.>
Thank you for your hard work @ashmouthbooks!
And thank you for sharing a such a lovely story @jackironsides! No books are fanbound that aren’t written by fan-authors! 💖
One of my other hobbies is crochet. Previously I have printed out patterns to carry around in my craft bag, but the patterns always end up folded and crumpled.
In an effort to keep the patterns in acceptable shape, I figured I would protect them inside a book! I chose an open spine style, a combination of Coptic-style (the center stiches) and two-needle style (stiches on the top and bottom of the spine).
Keep reading
Cat’s Paw Bindery @catspawbindery - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
