#tailfeather binding

[kulapti]

Tiny bookbindings of La petite mort by @howlingmoonrise, June 2025.

This is my entry in the Renegade 2025 Tiny Books Bang! I was delighted once again to work with @daemonluna who made this very fun typeset. We both were extremely entertained by making as many hot pink accents as possible for this fic. Thanks to the author for agreeing to let us bind this work! WIP photos here. Pictured here are the three finished copies, the slightly larger (and slightly more legible) author copy plus two slightly smaller copies for myself and the typesetter. Luna and howlingmoonrise have already received their gift copies in the mail, yay!

The hooked endpapers turned out very nice on these. I have not done a longstitch like this before (that's the visible thread on the finished spine) and I will do that again for sure! Very cool result I think!

Materials: Verona rayon bookcloth, archival book board, scrapbooking paper, and acrylic paint for the covers. Cotton embroidery thread and pink seam tape for the endbands. More cotton embroidery thread, beeswax, and archival PVA for the structure and laser printed text on archival paper for the main textblock, plus fountain pen ink for page edge decoration.

[kulapti]

Handmade tiny purple book earrings, Feb 2025.

These were really fun! I'm going to make the next set in green I think. I'm very glad I have made slightly less tiny books before this or it would have been much more difficult. I used the strategy of not cutting apart the signatures until after stitching the spine, which was historically a common strategy for dealing with other more reasonably-sized books.

[kulapti]

Matthew the Emotional Support Raven series bookbinding, June 2025.

Finally complete! I started this binding literally two years ago and stalled out, and then finally got back to it in the last few months. These fics are by @themirokai and they're just delightful. We got cute, we got silly, we got grief and drama. It's got range! These works always make me smile. This is Miro's copy, already mailed, and I have a copy of my own also. I gave her the better cover lol, the first version I did does not have the light blue bookcloth strip and the cover design is much less clear as a result. Might have to fix that.

Illustrations by myself, @mashumaru, and @wyvernquill, used with permission for the author copy :D Their works are posted here and here, and mine are mostly here.

This bookbinding style is a modified dos-à-dos. The short fics in each section are chronological from the front cover side, but as they are separate fics, you can open any of the three sections of the book and be at the beginning of one of the series pieces.

[kulapti]

Tiny bookbinding in progress; gasp the textblocks are naked! June 2025. La petite mort by @howlingmoonrise

I made three copies of this ficbinding for the 2025 Renegade Tiny Books Exchange, and here are some work in progress pics! In this event one person typesets the text and another person (@daemonluna who I cannot tag for unknown reasons) makes the physical book and mails it to the typesetter for a gift exchange. I also made a copy for myself and for the fic author, yay!

As you can see in the first pic I printed two sizes, one very tiny and the other a slightly larger but still quite small. I figured I would send the author one that would be a bit easier to handle and read, though all three copies are very small because I love making very tiny books. Look at that PINK I love the hot pink text decoration.

These feature one of my favorite nerdy bookbinding choices, hooked endpapers, where the decorative paper at the front and back of the book are stitched to the rest of the pages. The "tape" through the spine (it's fabric) does the structural work that the endpapers do on most modern mass-produced books. Hooked endpapers show off the structural role of the tapes, for better or for worse lol! The endpapers pieces that go inside the cover to match are loose on the table in the second photo.

I originally put the tapes in backwards and had to awkwardly thread them back through later so the black part would be visible instead of the white paper backing. When I have them pressing under the corner of my paper guillotine they are still backwards but they are fixed in the last pic. Last pic is right after I did the decorative page edges, which was super fun and I give Luna brainstorming credit for that design choice.

[kulapti]

Book repair of Flora of the Chicago Region, Aug 2025.

This is the authoritative botany reference text for plant species in Illinois. Reference books like this are very expensive, and the info is not frequently updated, so the mass-produced binding can easily wear out while the book's contents are still valuable. This is a functional repair with no added decoration. Before picture below.

[kulapti]

Coptic notebook (Aug 2025) using beautiful handmade marbled paper by @renato-crepaldi (Aug 2023).

I don't make ficbindings with coptic binding very often because I like those to look more similar to traditionally published works. Coptic stitch is really satisfying to me though because it doesn't require glue to hold the covers and pages together, and because I like how the functional bits of the binding are clearly visible.

For this journal, I used hooked endpapers; you can see the "hook" in the first two pics above, with the paper wrapped around the section of pages at the very front and back of the book. I put extra paper on the inside covers so I wouldn't have to throw away cut pieces too narrow to put on another cover.

[kulapti]

Tiny book earrings work in progress, take one. Jan 2025.

Most mini books you see (e.g. for sale very cheap on etsy) have taken the easy route and made their spines with glue, if they have pages at all. I am ridiculous and like making my own life difficult so I stitched these books like a normal full-size sewn binding. You can see the folded signatures in the second photo! I think I'll have to make these entirely with paper covers if I want to get the little hinges right next time.