Japanese Stab Binding

Background:
I am starting to experiment with bookbinding - and this is my first attempt at bookbinding.

Materials:
I took 16 pages of text weight paper and folded them in half and stacked them one on top of the other to make the bookblock. I then placed two slightly heavier pieces of paper at each end of the bookblock and sewed through all the pages at the spine end to hold them together with linen thread. I then cut pieces of bookcloth and glued it to the corners of the spine of the bookblock. I then covered the endpages with decorative paper to create the cover and sewed the binding with decorative thread.

There are three decorative stitches here all using a different pattern of holes - 4-Hole, Noble and Tortoise Shell

Notes:
The "4-hole" was the first one I did. I realized after I was trying to put the cover on that I shouldn't have bound the endpages into the bookcloth with the bookblock - this made it difficult to begin and end the decorative stitching. It does look a bit more "finished" with the spine covered - but it's not right!. I also realized I needed to really get the stitches tight as I did them because you can't go back and tighten them very easily.

The "Noble" was next. On this one I didn't double the thread when I stitched it and had to go back and try to stitch it a second time. Not an easy task.

The "Tortoise Shell" was last. On this one I can tell that I didn't get the holes exactly aligned so the stitching doesn't look neat and even. This is just a practice thing, so I must go practice.

I am showing another book at the bottom which I started during a class to show the basics - you can see some of the steps described above better in these pics.