Book Binding Workshop

Ginny, Karen, Jane with their newly created books!

Emily demonstrating how to trim the cloth corners during glueing. 

What a wonderful day at the book making workshop yesterday (Wednesday)!

Just three of us so it was like private lessons!  Emily Umerntum is a professional bookbinder!  She brought tons of interesting tools and all the paper and the covers were pre cut for us as we only had 4 hours to complete the project.  

This particular process is called a Japanese Stab Binding book.  We used fabric (special coated fabric in this case) for the covers, pretty papers for the inside covers and then gorgeous tinted pastel paper for the 25 pages inside.  The books were placed in a press that she brought along (I was amazed).  More photos to follow in a subsequent post.  We completed the books by "sewing" the bindings.  What a special journal this will be!!!  All this for $15! 

Incidentally if you put "Japanese Stab Binding" into YouTube you can find several nice videos of how to do this.  But nothing beats an actual teacher helping you!  And by the way,  Emily has a special "punch tool" she uses for making the holes in the cover and papers.  But in a pinch you can use an awl.