Beginning Bookbinding

Posted in Miscellaneous

So, I have this notebook lying around from an old job. It is a) covered in fake plastic leather, and b) has a bunch of corporate branding on the outside.

A navy blue notebook is photographed from above on a wood background. Two corporate logos on the cover are covered by scraps of paper that say "boring corporate logo" and similar on them. The notebook also has navy elastic holding it shut, and a navy ribbon page-marker.

The inside is perfectly fine, though, and I have wanted to try bookbinding….

The author's hand holds the navy notebook open on a wood surface. The inside of the notebook is beige lined paper, with no corporate branding.

So this week I ripped it apart!

The cardboard inserts that were inside the notebook's cover are photographed from above on a cork surface. They have been stripped of their pleather and paper coverings, and are arranged to look like an open book.

After consulting the YouTube channels of Bitter Melon Bindery and DAS Bookbinding, I figured out I needed to reinforce the cotton sateen fabric I wanted to re-cover the notebook with. (Which, after reinforcing, is then called bookcloth!)

Two samples of fabric are photographed from above on a wood surface. The top one is a long strip of navy paisley cotton sateen, folded in half. The underside of the fabric has tissue paper glued to it. The bottom square is a twill fabric, half of which has tissue paper glued to it. The underside of the twill (which isn't visible) has the same navy cotton sateen glued to it.

I tried gluing tissue paper (top), twill fabric from the stash (bottom, right), and twill then tissue paper (bottom, left) to the back of the fabric. I ended up using just twill fabric; it was stiff, yet still flexible, and I was confident it would stick to the cardboard.

The cover of the notebook is photographed from above on a cork surface. The cardboard of the inside of it is visible, where the outer fabric has been wrapped around and the elastic glued in place.

Which it did! I also re-cut the slits in the back cover and re-attached the elastic.

The completed notebook is photographed from above on a wood surface. The cover is facing up, which is now covered in the navy paisley cotton sateen fabric. The navy elsatic holds the noteobok shut, and the ribbon peeks out the bottom.

This notebook looks so much nicer now. I glued the pages back in as well, don’t worry! This twill-backed-bookcloth method did make the curved corners quite thick, and the pages aren’t quite centred, but I’m pretty happy for a first bookbinding attempt. And it should hold up to wear and tear okay.

Anyways, see ya!

Yves

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Published by Filliefanatic

Lover of all things tiny, model horse collector, reader and crafter for life!

4 thoughts on “Beginning Bookbinding”

  2. Love it! It turned out really well!

    I did something similar but I left the cover intact after removing the pages. I etched, sanded, painted, then basically turned it into a traveler’s notebook-style cover. I haven’t posted it about it yet but plan to after I upload my photos.

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