MINI BOOK WITH SEWN SPINE

 I usually fold my little books or attach the pages with rings or ties, but I have branched out a little with this book which has a sewn spine.

I made three signatures (sheets of paper folded and stacked) and sewed them together.  You can find any number of examples of how to do this on line, but basically, starting on the outside of the folded stack,  I just made three holes went in at the middle, then out on one side, back in on the other side, out again through the middle and then tied of the threads.

I used some lilac handmade paper that I have had for ages but for which I've never quite found a use.  I used quilting thread, passed through bees wax to do the actual sewing, and pre-pierced the holes using an awl.  If your stack is too thick to go through is one go, make a template with the position of the holes marked so that you can do a few sheets at a time, but still get the holes in the right place.

The cover was made with two pieces of packing card slightly larger than the pages, with a third piece placed between with a couple of mm between, for the spine.  (I just measured the height of the sewn signatures to work out how wide to make this.  After cutting a piece of darker and thicker lavender handmade paper, about 1cm larger than the three pieces together, I applied double sided tape to the edges of the card pieces and centred them on the cover.  After mitring the corners, I put some more double-sided tape on the edges and stuck them down.

Next up I just checked everything for size, and then stuck the front page of the inner pages to the inner edge of the front cover, and repeated the same with the back page and the back cover.

I probably should have re en-forced the spine with masking or cloth tape but as the cover paper was strong, and the book quite small I didn't bother, and I think it will all stay together OK....time will tell.

Excuse my gardening fingers but I thought I'd include my hand to give you a sense of scale.  Rather than stick to any pre-determined measurement I simply used the size of the paper as a guide.

Clearly if you wanted you could easily add extra decoration to the front, which I may well do once I decide how to use the book.