Häxkatt Press

Hobbyist bookbinder and antiquarian book collector. My creations are for personal enjoyment and not for profit. I follow back and like from @avant-gardnr :)

[haxkattpress]

Away Childish Things by @letteredlettered

I'm so excited to finally share this bind of one of my all time favorite fics! Thanks to lettered's generous binding policy, I decided to go all out.

This bind has a foiled cover and spine, hand sewn silk endbands, and thirteen custom chapter headers. It was also my first time rounding and backing.

You can find more pictures and information about my process under the cut.

For the cover and spine, I recreated the design of Beasts of the Field (1902) by William J. Long.

I wanted something that captured both the whimsy and maturity of the story, and this cover fit my vision perfectly. It also gave me the opportunity to recreate another antique cover from the public domain.

Unfortunately, the design was a bit complicated for my Cameo 4, so I was unable to fill the lines in. You can also tell that the foil did not adhere properly near the bottom, so the flowers are lighter than I would like them to be.

Because of the trouble I was having with my Cameo, I decided to foil the spine by hand. I deeply regretted this decision two hours later, and it took me four hours to finish foiling. My wrist still hurts!

Sewing the headbands was my absolute favorite part. I was encouraged to try them by a lovely binder on Instagram, and I ended up completely addicted. I splurged on some fancy silk thread so I could give this fic the royal treatment it deserves! I think they look like beautiful little caterpillars.

As for the rounding and backing... I'm not going to talk about it. Nightmare. Lots of nervous sweating. Emotional agony. Next topic!

I worked on the typeset back at the beginning of January when I had some time off, and it took me a solid week of obsessive editing to complete. My sister suggested that I use Harry and Draco's patronuses for the chapter art, but there unfortunately aren't many public domain illustrations of deer and foxes playing together.

It was at that point that I also decided that I wanted the animals to match the respective ages of Harry and Draco and the tone of each chapter. For the 13 chapters I ended up editing 25 different illustrations together. The bulk of these are taken from vintage versions of Bambi and Reynard the Fox. It's possible that a few stock images from 1980s nature books snuck in there, but I did my best to keep them all pre 1925.

I'm not a skilled editor, and some of these are worse than others, but I'm quite proud of what I was able to cobble together. On the final page I put a young fox and deer running off together. I wanted it to seem like Harry and Draco's inner children had been freed.

I'm a bit embarrassed to say that this bind took me about 4-5 months to complete! I started in early January, and went wildly off track learning how to round, back, and sew headbands. And then I was hit by some killer creative block that only lifted last week!

There are still many things I could improve on, but I'm so proud of everything that I learned and accomplished with this bind! A big thank you to lettered for inspiring me with such a wonderful story. <3

[haxkattpress]

hey! sorry if you've made a post about this already, but i was wondering if you had recommendations for websites you use when sourcing antique/vintage illustrations for the inside of your binds? i already use pinterest (for covers), but since your binds incorporate so many illustrations into their typesets i thought i'd ask. thanks!

Hi! Pinterest is a great place to start, and I use it frequently. For deeper hunting, I recommend digging into public domain books on Internet Archive. I usually start by picking a cover I want to adapt, identifying the artist / artistic movement, and researching other major figures from the same group.

Staying within the boundaries of a particular time period and movement help me establish a visual identity for my binds. I usually spend several weeks on research before I begin typesetting and cleaning the images I've chosen.

tl;dr digging into the background of the covers you've chosen will do more for you than any singular website can!

[haxkattpress]

✨Adventures in Gauffering✨

As requested (albeit several months late) I have finally put together a video on my gauffering process!

Please take this video with a grain of salt– I am a complete beginner, and this method is far from traditional. It is simply what I was able to accomplish at my current skill level with the materials I had on hand.

For more in depth videos on sanding and edge painting, please check out @duran-binding and @copticcowgirl . They taught me everything I know!

There is so little instructional information about gauffering available online, particularly with budget materials. The amount of trial and error it took to establish a method that yielded fairly consistent results was frankly maddening, so I sincerely hope that this look into my process is useful to someone.

[haxkattpress]

One Elephant at a Time by fundlebundle

"The flame cast strange shadows on his face and made the Dark Mark dance on his pale skin. It had been ten years since he’d last seen Draco Malfoy."

It's hard to believe that I started working on the typeset for this bind in October of last year. Nearly eleven months later, I have finally managed to bring my vision to life.

This bind has a foiled cover and spine, hand sewn silk endbands, and edges that have been painted and gauffered. It also includes my first attempt at a hollow.

You can find more pictures and information about my process under the cut.

***this fic is an unfinished WIP on Ao3***

For the cover and spine, I recreated Albert Angus Turbayne's design for the Macmillan Peacock Series (1896).

Macmillan reused this cover for multiple titles over the course of several years. From what I can tell, it was initially created for the works of Thomas Love Peacock. If you look at the left corner by the edge of the peacock's tail feather, you can see Turbayne's unique signature.

Choosing this cover locked me into an 1890s Art Nouveau theme for the typeset, and I spent a considerable amount of time tracking down potential chapter headers that harmonized visually.

Peacocks are a distinctive motif in this fic, and I tried to choose images that matched the individual tones of each act. I represented Harry's presence with warm browns, yellows, and oranges, and Edwin Selwyn's with imposing blues and blacks.

A full list of the artists used in my typeset can be found at the bottom of this post.

Predictably, everything that could go wrong with this bind did go wrong. I botched the rounding and backing on my first textblock, and had to reprint it. It also took me a long time to find endpapers that could play nicely with the yellows, blues, and browns. Luckily, Jemma Lewis had exactly what I needed!

I had never sanded or painted the edges of a book before, so I spent several weeks practicing on scrap textblocks while I waited for my brass tool to arrive. None of this would have been possible without the incredible tutorials made by @copticcowgirl and @duran-binding. Their guidance (along with @pleasantboatpress!) helped me figure out a method that worked for me. Duran Binding even sent me some pages about gauffering from a book she had!

Unfortunately, I lost my goddamn mind when I started trying to figure out the gauffering.

There aren't any comprehensive gauffering tutorials online, and the information about it is scant. I had to piece together my method from stray book pages, stalked instagram comments, and weeks upon weeks of trial and error. Heating the tool correctly was far more difficult than I anticipated, and I didn't have a proper finishing stove, so I just stuck it in the flame of my gas stove (thanks to @pleasantboatpress for the heating advice!). Even more difficult was figuring out the correct amount of pressure to put down without burning my foil or edges. Pictured above is the cardstock grid I made to ensure my lines were even.

I also couldn't fit my textblock in my guillotine, so it took me roughly 5 hours of sanding per edge to get the mirror finish I needed. I didn't want to give myself carpal tunnel, so I limited myself to 1-2 hours of sanding per day. Each edge took me a full week to complete. In total, my edge decoration journey took me about three months.

So please, LOOK AT THEM! LOOK! MY BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS!

DOES MY AGONY PLEASE YOU?

I was also too chickenshit to try gauffering on my good textblock without testing, so I also finished two edges on my reject. I also tested my endbands on it. I will probably finish it when I'm feeling less raw.

Unfortunately, gauffering was only the beginning of my suffering. The file for the cover was a challenge to create and adapt. I knew that it was a bit of a pipe dream, and I knew that it would be hard on my machine. I usually do a series of cardstock tests while refining my files before I commit to bookcloth. It proved to be too much for my Cameo 4, and it started gouging my foil and paper after completing a few runs of the cover.

After two weeks of troubleshooting and emailing support, I accepted that my Cameo 4 was dead. Queue a month of depression, and some of the greatest frustration I've ever experienced with a project. I eventually sucked it up and bought a Cameo 5, and had to do extensive testing to figure out the best settings for their native heat pen system.

These are the vast majority of my cover tests (most of them are double sided). Foiling the cover took 12.5 nail biting hours, but my Cameo 5 finally pulled through! Hooray! I love you Cameo 5! Please don't die on me! There was one odd area that refused to foil, so I cracked open my old WRMK pen and filled it in by hand. Pro tip: separate every design element in as many layers as possible so you can double up on foil and redo problem areas easily.

After this, everything began to move along quite quickly.

@copticcowgirl convinced me to put a hollow on my book, and sent me some absolutely incredible notes and videos to help me along! She was also incredibly gracious when I barged into her DMs wailing about millimeter and half millimeter increments, and gently guided me towards the finish line. So much of this bind would not have been possible without her!

Mummifying the hollow was my favorite part, and I really do believe that it helps my book open beautifully. After that, it was a small matter of casing in, and I was free from my seemingly eternal torment!

I would also like to extend my thanks to @tsurashi-bindery, who has been by my side every step of the way. She is the world's best tie breaker, and she patted me on the back every time I told her that I was really, truly, totally going to quit binding for real this time. Her aesthetic sense is fantastic, and she spent hours helping me pick, edit, and arrange my photos. Thank you for being my cheerleader. <3

I also genuinely appreciate everyone that reached out to me on Insta and Discord while I was posting WIPs- your encouragement truly kept me going!

I will likely be posting a gauffering video at some point when I have the time. I don't currently have any plans to share the typeset unless the fic is completed, but you're welcome to DM me.

If you've read this far you're a superstar! This fic is incredibly close to my heart, and I'm relieved that I was able to properly express how I feel about it through this bind. Here's hoping my next project is a bit shorter!

Art credits:

Cover: Macmillan Peacock Series, Albert Angus Turbayne (1896)

Title: Untitled book plate, Alfred Petrasch (1857-1910)

Act I title: Macmillan’s Illustrated Standard Novels, Albert Turbayne (1896)

Act I chapter: Cigales et lis, paons et cytise, bordures, M. P. Verneuil (1897)

Act II title: Charles Scribner’s Sons the Modern Poster, Will H. Bradley (1895)

Act II chapter: Kunst en Samenleving, G.W. Dijsselhof (1893)

Act III title: Bradley, His Book, Will H. Bradley (1896)

Act III chapter: Poissons et algues, coq, écoinçon; paons et vigne; lièvres, chiens et ronces, bordure, M. P. Verneuil (1897)

Dinkus: Fonderie Typographique Française: Caractères et vignettes bois (1922)

Act ender: Combinaisons ornementales, M. P. Verneuil (1901)

[copticcowgirl]

Fanbinding: Our Objective Remains Unchanged by @citrusses

My first Drarry bind(!!), my first non-magical AU, and my first time gifting a bind to another fanbinder. @haxkattpress generously allowed me to use her beautiful typeset back in October, and I decided to gift her and the author a bound copy by way of saying thank you.

I know I'm supposed to talk about my bind, but it was her bind and description of this fic—“...the most creative and meticulously researched fics I have ever had the pleasure of reading"—that hooked me last year. I had never read a Drarry before, but I suddenly wanted to blind bind OORU based solely on the time and effort she dedicated to it.

So thank you, Haxkatt, for your generosity and for finding your way into friendship with me. Cheers to binding slowly, not rushing creativity, and becoming so absorbed with tedious details that the rest of the planet fades away.

And thank you, @citrusses, for writing such a wonderful AU to become immersed in. As soon as I finished binding my copy, I plopped myself on my couch and dove in. I loved it and love your work.

Also, I will never get over reading the physical copy of a fic I bound myself. Holding it in my hands, curled up on my couch, and disappearing into a story someone spent countless hours crafting for free is such a high.

Fanfic writers, I will never get over you.

Since this was a blind bind, I gleaned details from the typeset and the fic description, going for posh academic vibes to match the Oxford setting. I nearly fell out of my chair while sifting through my fabric stash; it matches the chapter headers perfectly. I kept my endbands simple and found beautiful art by Kenneth Crane for my dust jacket, making adjustments in Canva.

In the fic, Draco quotes poetry, so I pulled those for the flaps. Thank you to my dearest @phoenixortheflame for checking over my dust jacket for final tweaks—I've nicknamed her "The Finisher."

Bind details below for each copy—one for Haxkatt, one for citrusses, one for myself—bound for personal use only.

Bind details: bind style: full cloth bind, flatback(2), rounded&backed(1), sewn endpapers, ramie bands endpapers: 65lb tan cardstock fabric: quilt fabric from a quaint little shop in Ball Ground, Georgia, where my mother and grandmother live. Picking through fabric with them (quilt ideas for them, book ideas for me!) during December 2024 is a fond memory. This fabric came from that haul. book edge decoration: acrylic ink edges(2) and hand-marbled edges(1) from the @renegadeguild California meetup in February endbands: double faux core, 4mm leather core, Japanese silk thread typeset: @haxkattpress I love every.single.detail. dust jacket: designed in Canva; title font, Craw Modern; author font, Zing Rust Script; body & flap font, EB Garamond, The Seasons; art by Kenneth Crane

It was during these binds that I made the decision to keep detailed notes throughout my process. My ENDLESS thanks to @mourningmountainsbindery for sending me your awe-inspiring Google spreadsheet.

What a difference it makes, keeping a record of what you did right and what you'd change going forward. Sometimes you don't know until the bind is done, but now I can look back and learn from my mistakes or replicate my wins.

Now for my favorite part: BTS!

And finally, because no bind is complete without a little pain, I've included a few quotes between myself and @maleekamolscreates when it came to sanding a rounded fore-edge. The time it takes to get it right is a special type of agony.

Especially when you have to do it twice. Which I did, because Round 1 was not perfect and because I love pain.

[mrsoread]

Away Childish Things by @letteredlettered

I’ve been wanting to read this fandom classic for such a long time yet I always knew I wanted to do it in book form, hence I decided to do a blind bind for myself...

This project is basically an ode to @haxkattpress beautiful typeset which informed most of my design choices – do check out the post of her original bind, it is magnificent!

I wanted to keep the vintage feeling of the typeset and decided to go with a very reduced cover and focus on materials. And I knew that the dark green leather I already had at home would be perfect for what I had in mind! The idea was to make it look like an old children’s book but with a bit of a playful modern font.

I really like how it came out but it was also a long way to get there, Working with real leather is always a challenge and especially with a thick one like this. Also the foil quill did not stick evenly in all places and my case was way too small for the text block (why do I never learn!?) which made casing in quite the challenge.

BUT I love how smooth and round the leather turned on the spine, how much the endpapers fit to the typeset, how the gold and dark green interact and overall I think I did manage to pull off the classy look that I had envisioned.

Thank you so much @haxkattpress for sharing your incredible typeset with me and @letteredlettered for allowing me to bind your story! I cannot wait to read it! 🫶🏻

[haxkattpress]

✨How to make inlays with a Silhouette Cameo 4✨

I finally slapped together a tutorial on my process for making inlays with my Silhouette Cameo 4! For higher quality you can visit my Instagram.

This is of course not applicable to all designs; if you have a design that goes across the spine and back cover, you will likely want to forego the transfer tape and attach your design to a piece of paper instead.

It should be noted that I am an amateur, and this is simply the method that works best for me personally.

Happy binding!

[haxkattpress]

Our Objective Remains Unchanged by @citrusses

"Harry Potter, returning member of the Oxford University Boat Club, has two goals for the spring of 2005: beat Cambridge, and beat Draco Malfoy. Perhaps not in that order."

This has to be one of the most creative and meticulously researched fics I have ever had the pleasure of reading. If you haven't read it yet, don't walk— run! Citrusses is an absolute genius, and kindly gave me permission to bind her masterpiece.

The cover of this bind is made out four different shades of Allure bookcloth cut by my Cameo 4, and the centerpiece is printed and hand foiled. The banners were machine foiled in gold and black with hand foiled rose gold shading. The endbands were hand sewn with Gutermann silk thread.

You can find more pictures and information about my process under the cut.

The amount of inspiration this fic gave me was overwhelming, and Citrusses' writing fully immersed me in the world of competitive rowing. While designing this bind, I was struck by the sheer wealth of Oxford rowing memorabilia available to me. I settled on this 1929 illustration from an official publication on the Oxford and Cambridge Centenary Boat Race for the cover.

"How hard could it possibly be?" I thought, foolishly. The answer was HARD, but I'll get into that later.

Due to the wealth of design options, I believe that this may be the best typeset I have created to date. Thanks to the help of my friend @tsurashi-bindery, I was able to learn the basics of InDesign (kicking and screaming all the way). There will be spoilers in the text of these photos, so try not to read them if you haven't finished the fic!

For the title page, I modified To See the Crews in Training by Charles Pears (1930). I believe that this was part of a series of advertisements for the race in the London Underground.

For the chapter headers, I redrew the crest from an Oxford Oars, Flags, and Arms postcard, presumably pre 1914. I also had some fun creating a mock email using La_Temperanza's How to Mimic Email Windows on Ao3. Cormac's email makes me laugh every time I read it, and Citrusses provided an appropriately pompous subject.

I also had lots of fun editing the oars from the official OUBC logo to serve as dividers and decorations for the page numbers.

Additionally, I got to edit a full newspaper page for the fic! I was very excited find an opportunity to slip Leyendecker's The Finish (1908) in.

The fic ended beautifully, so I wanted to include one last element at the end to capture the atmosphere. I settled on L'aviron (1932) by Milivoj Uzelac. It makes me feel as though Harry and Draco will continue rowing together long after I've closed the book.

I of course had lots of fun sewing the headbands, and got to do it with not one but TWO copies!

Things got tricky when I had to recreate the cover. I had a poor understanding of how vector images worked, and ended up having to redraw it three times. Once I finally cracked and taught myself how to use Illustrator, the program crashed...and I had to redraw it a fourth time!

I set the vector to cut on my Cameo 4, and I assembled the pieces together like a puzzle on my Silhouette mat. I used Allure's indigo, skylight, white, and black bookcloth in the process. I will be making a tutorial video on this method, so I will keep it brief here.

I also cut a piece of bookcloth to 8.5"x 11" and fed it through my inktank printer to print the center design. I then cut it out using the print and cut feature on my Cameo 4. Both of these methods were a first for me, and they were very scary!!

To be perfectly frank, the foiling was a nightmare and I don't want to get into it. I machine foiled the gold, and then foiled black lettering on top of it. I foiled the rose gold shading by hand, and then foiled a thin black outline along the edge of the banners to make them stand out more.

I hand foiled the spines (because I'm scared of measuring), painted the exposed board (to hide any gaps in the inlays), and used transfer tape to lift my design from the Silhouette mat and onto the cover.

One more fun detail— my copy and the author's copy are sisters! The dark blue and the light blue are inverted on the author's copy, making it distinguishable from mine. This is the first time I have made an author's copy for a fic, and I was admittedly incredibly nervous. I always worry about what authors will think of my work, but Citrusses gave me an incredible amount of encouragement and support throughout the process! Thank you for trusting me with your precious fic!

This story is a work of fanfiction and can be read on Ao3 for free. My bind and typeset are for personal use only and not for sale or profit. Keep fandom free!

[thebeautifulbook]

SALAMÁN AND ABSÁL: AN ALLEGORY Art binding by Jámi Bumpus of De la More Press (1904).

source

[blueberrybindery]

Wildfire by tears_of_a_clown

made as a gift for a friend! i can finally post it now that she's got it ^-^

construction notes and comments in the read more

things i learned for this bind!

- backing for real

- marbling edges (and then i drew on top with a micron)

- double core endbands

- reverse engineering how to use a vintage hot foil stamping machine with no instructions (😭)

full process post

i'm pretty happy with this one! the design process gave me some grief because i kept changing my mind about what i wanted. but the case fit really nicely which is rare for me lmao

[teleportbooks]

Ficbinding: verses by quigonejinn

One of two books for a charity raffle winner, this is a postcanon xiyao fic with a ... happy? ending (listen, it really is a happy ending!). I wanted this to be elegant & ornate, but not overly decorated. I borrowed the style of chapter headings (the number and an ornament to the side) from Catwings--although the ornament is different, I loved that design the moment I saw it and have always wanted to find a book to use it for.

The frame on the cover and the endpapers are chiyogami paper I was able to get at my local craft store--it's not my first time using crane chiyogami paper on a xiyao fic, somehow it just fits. Some experimentation with negative space on the cover.

The title and body of the fic are set in Walleye, and the initials are Floral Capitals. The ornaments are from the "Vintage Decorative Signs" series of fonts.

[thebeautifulbook]

THE SECRETS OF THE OAK-ROOM by Marion E. Forester. (London: Religious Tract Society, 1920)

[thebeautifulbook]

THE GOBLIN MARKET AND OTHER POEMS by Christina Rossetti (London, [1862]) Art binding.

[michaelmoonsbookshop]

The Henry Irving Shakespeare

Gresham Publishing Co. - c.1906

Cover / Spine design by Talwin Morris

[michaelmoonsbookshop]

The Henry Irving Shakespeare

Gresham Publishing Co. - c.1906

Cover design by Talwin Morris

[grimmauldplacepublishing]

The Nightmare Club by Elle Gray

Summary: Hermione and Ron are going back to Hogwarts to do N.E.W.T.s, Ginny isn't. Harry hasn't decided, until he has, in front of the Wizengamot and now he's responsible for Malfoy as well. A tale of enemies who learn to get along, get it wrong and get it on. Everything is purple, some things are on fire and no-one is sleeping properly. But don't worry, there's tea!

I loved doing this bind so much. I tried out even more new (to me) techniques on this one! I did a three piece bradel for the first time, speckled edges, and a two layer stencil for the cover.

I knew for the typeset I wanted to do an overarching tea theme because in the fic there is a lot of tea drinking for The Nightmare Club, so the title page features a tea bag and the section separators are tea themed as well.

Overall I think it turned out great! There are a few things I look forward to improving upon like stiffening the pleather next time, it just slightly wrinkles at the top.

Supplies: * Marbled paper from a Renegade Member * Navy Dubletta bookcloth from Colophon * Stencils cut with my cricut * Vectors for the cover made by me * Typeset done by me

[mourningmountainsbindery]

Recursion by Tessa Crowley is one of my favorite Harry Potter time travel fics. A bookbinding friend read it on my rec, and talking about it sent me down a rabbit hole of how I wanted to bind it… and today I woke as if from a daze and this was in my hands.

I bound the book in goat leather from Siegel, and decorated with foil.

I was lucky enough to have made some French curl marbles papers that echoed the fractal curls that I used on the typeset, and that are thematically connected to the story.

Endbands are Trebizond silk, and the edges are speckled with black and copper acrylic paint.