The Craft work done last night was a handmade Grimoire. My husband and I have been doing bookbinding for several years, but we ran across a video on YouTube about 'long stitch' binding to make journals, tomes, or in my case a new Grimoire.
If you have read one of my previous posts ( What I Lost, What Has Been Reborn) you might understand why I wanted to create a new Grimoire. So.....I started one it.
First I started with newsprint paper (18x24) and double folded them. I wanted enough pages to equal or as close to 413(the day my familiar passed on to the Goddess)as I could. Each sheet, once folded makes 8 pages to write on, front and back. 52 sheets were double folded.
If you have read one of my previous posts ( What I Lost, What Has Been Reborn) you might understand why I wanted to create a new Grimoire. So.....I started one it.
I then put 4 of the folded pages together to make a signature, and ended up with 13 signatures. (Another 413)
Next step was to gather matte board, the embossing thread and needle, contact glue (E6000), fabric for cover, and scissors and get started putting it all together.
Matte board was cut about 1/8 in taller and wider than the pages.
My chosen fabric for the cover was then marked with the matte board aligned and a small hammer and nail was used to punch tiny holes on every intersection of the 13 lines drawn for the 13 signatures.
Once all the holes had been punched into the fabric, they needed to to punch into each of the signatures as well.
Once all holes had been punched it was time to sew the signatures to the cover. With the long stitch method, there is no hard spine.
A work still in progress, but it shows how the long stitch looks. Once all signatures were sewn into the fabric, all that was left was to add the front and back cover (matte board).
I cut the fabric at an angle to get a clean corner. E6000 was used to glue cover to the matte board once it was lined up.
This procedure was done on the front and back. The Grimoire was basically done. I added a few decorations to front cover.
The finished Grimoire spine. I love the long stitch look. And decorative brads were placed on the front cover.
One of the other adornments was decorative corner embellishments that I lightly glued and sewn into the front cover.
...and here it is! My new Grimoire. I still have some small decorating I want to do... but for most part I like the simplicity of it.