#coptic stitch

[ivytheiceelf]

Coptic stitching and friends

I used to look at exposed book spines and think "there's no way that is going to be durable". Until I saw the multiverse of options out there for embellishment which end up lending a lot more support to the book structure!

One of them is weaving. Using the space between two sewing stations to create a tiny loom and weave away - fortunately, embroidery thread is perfect for this end and can be found in virtually every sewing shop.

This notebook was primarily sewn using coptic stitch, to which two weaving sections were added.

The other option that really caught my eye was varying sewing patterns and techniques in the same spine. Here I borrowed heavily from Shannon Mou's work (instagram.com/linkandpage), although in a much less refined way than she does.

This watercolor book used coptic stitch, French link and a variation of the link stitch where 3-4 lines are linked together (instead of only 2, as in the French variation).

Most of the challenges here were related to availability of materials. For coptic stitching, I favor medium-thickness thread that is at the same time collapsible but does not fray, and I haven't yet found a good source of linen thread near me. In this case I had to resort to a synthetic material, which I really do not advise.

Materials used: Notebook #1 (w/ weaving)

70gsm lined paper

Cotton thread, white, ~1mm (coptic stitch)

Embroidery thread, blue, 6 fibers (weaving embellishment)

Non-backed cotton fabric (covers)

Glittery cardstock for endpapers

Notebook #2 (floral)

300gsm Fabriano watercolor paper

Synthetic, satin-like green threadc, ~1.5mm (stitching)

Satin ribbon (spine and closure)

Yellow fabric scraps folded inwards (spine)

Non-backed cotton fabric (covers)

Handmade (not by me) paper for endpapers

[illucescere]

✷ Things I Saw Once ✷

coptic-bound hardcover zine with fold out pages - cover and pages 1-14

[pressedflowerpages]

ISSHO!!!

I finally finished binding Issho! I love love love this story from @toastytoaster22 and I’m so happy I got to spend more time with it in this way 💜✨

The thread colors were chosen to match the papers and look good as a set of three. The papers were chosen to match different character auras and correspond loosely to their appearance in the story. Teru is the electrically charged yellow, Shigeo the geometric pink/purple/blue, Ritsu the shards of blue/purple, Serizawa the shimmery stars of purple/pink, and Shou the swirling orange/pink (photos at bottom of post). The paper gradients I tweaked/created in canva and then overlaid holographic sticker paper on top of the printed cardstock.

I really wanted to add the title to the spine despite doing an exposed, coptic stitch style binding and followed a tutorial so that I could diy my own stitch pattern. I also wanted to denote the volume number from two sides, with panels on the front and decorative stitches on the spine that have a tiny bead threaded at each grouping.

For the title page illustrations, I simplified reference photos and added details that made them feel more like the items I felt were memorable and important from each arc.

I designed my own section break in canva and spent way too long agonizing over the typeset (only to still find little errors after binding). Perhaps it took so long because I kept falling back into the story while fixing the formatting. Oops.

This was a really time consuming, and at times frustrating, project but it was also super fun and I learned so much. I think my stitches were maybe less wiggly and/or too tight by volume three?? I’ve never done insets or this type of stitching or made anything so large before — it was three volumes of firsts. Doing everything three times was great practice (and good for troubleshooting) but rather exhausting too.

All in all, I'm so very glad I finally brought my vision for this story to life and it makes me want to work on more things (after a restorative break from bookbinding). Thank you again Toasty for being an inspiring writer, human, and friend.

If you read all this, THANK YOU and I hope you enjoyed my valiant attempts at project photography in the most terrible of lighting conditions! Here are some bonus aura paper photos :)

[erratum-paginae]

Things have been quite rough lately.

I felt sad, so I made myself a simple coptic notebook using my cute chiyogami that a friend brought from Japan, just to prove myself that I could still do it.

Now it's 1h30 later, I'm still sad, but I have the cutest bunny poorly-coptic-stiched notebook EVER.

[ornithologyorthodoxy]

3/6/25

[violoncellobindery]

tuc week 2022 anthology by blanketed_in_stars

I remember reading this series like daily back when tuc week 2022 was ongoing. Before then, I don't think I'd ever considered the ship. Fast forward 3 years later and armed with way too much power, it easily made my to-bind list, and I also really wanted to get into the practice of making author copies. Binderery let me check both of those boxes off.

Thank you so much to @blanketed-in-stars for letting me bind her work, which you can read for yourself on a03 here! It's fantastic and I recommend it to all the hamnet/mareth fans out there. Literally rewired my entire world view of them.

Progress pics and way too long history dive/ramble below the cut:

I really wanted something that looked like it could belong in the Underland, which posed a huge challenge. Their society was mostly reliant on technology from the 1600s, kept records with vellum and parchment scrolls, or in the case of Sandwich, carved them into the walls. But what about books?

Gutenburg's press started printing commercially in around the 1450s, but the first American and English presses started in 1638 and 1476, respectively. It wasn't exactly a new technology, but it certainly may not have been something one could just lug down to the Underland(or take on a ship). So were the lack of books due to never being in Gregor's viewpoint, Regalia being a society that didn't value books, or simply a lack of supplies? How much of the population, especially the Underlanders, could read, anyway? Was that something restricted to the rats, who often went topside to read (eat) library books, and the upper class in Regalia, or was most of the population literate? Could the spinners make a silk paper-like cloth? Could they cast their own type and run sheets through a press? What about handwritten books? (Did the Regalians even have a currency?) Maybe they were simply too focused on military affairs and had no time for books. There were simply too many questions to answer, so I ended up going "well, I want this bound and it doesn't have to be precise down to the letter. let's do this."

I went Coptic binding because it was first used as early as the 2nd century CE, though likely not a popular binding method in England. However, coptic binding/the codex ties back to the Roman diptych, which felt fitting for Regalia, as a very Greek/Roman inspired society. As for the fabric, I picked it simply because it reminded me of the jungle where we first meet Hamnet. The vines were too good.

I set the binding to pamphlet which felt way too thick, so I ended up reprinting it twice: the one you see above, and then the author's copy, which I was able to do in cream because my paper arrived the day after. Only the author copy has thicker boards because I found them after I cut the first ones and didn't want to waste those. It happens lol.

Once again, I'm thrilled with how it turned out :) and one final thank you to blanketed_in_stars for letting me do this and the Renegade Guild for all their help during Binderery!

[blue-nebraska]

what to do with all your scraps/misprints/random bits of paper you can't bring yourself to throw away? bind them into a sketchbook 🌾📖🌦️

ID: Four photos of spreads from a hand-bound book. The pages are interspersed with prints of a grassy landscape, a truck, and a collage of vegetables.

[letthemyeetcake]

Think I'm getting the hand of Coptic stitch binding. The washi paper is taking the longest now.