Absolutely delighted!

This is going to be a short one today. I’m so excited I wanted to make a note of it. Last weekend my friend Craig and I led a workshop on binding journals. It was fun and the preparation and the workshop itself inspired me to get back to book binding.

Two of my attempts at Coptic binding

I’ve never understood how to properly do a Coptic stitch binding, one where there is no hard spine and the stitching that holds the book together is both functional and decorative. The advantage of this type of binding is that the book lies completely flat. Jake recently gave me a piece of cloth that he wants me to use as the cover for a journal for him. I thought Coptic binding would be the way to go because of the lie-flat feature and it will also show off the linen thread he sourced for me.

I watched a couple of YouTube videos, including one by my current favourite book binder, Ido Agassi from Israel. His videos are usually really clear but I found myself struggling with how to attach the cover to the first signature.* I made a practice book and used way more thread than I thought I needed so I went searching again.

I came across a video I hadn’t watched before. Sometimes I feel that I get the same set of results when I google a topic repeatedly. I hit absolute gold with this one from Natasa at Treasure Books in Australia. She goes through the process step by step with good close-ups, clear explanations and, bonus, she has a downloadable PDF with a set of instructions which she leaves up on the screen and refers to as she demonstrates what to do. I SO love good teaching! I hardly ever comment on videos but all the other comments are over two years old and I thought it might be nice for her to know that her video is still helping people, so I left a comment.

Natasa and her video really did make my day. Time to go practice.

Coptic binding opens flat

*A signature is a collection of folded pages that is sewn to the cover. There are often several signatures to a book. Take a look at any hard cover book that is sewn rather than glued and you’ll be able to see the separate signatures.


“A bookbinding signature is called that because, historically, printers signed or marked each folded section with a letter or number (A, B, C...) to guide the binder in assembling the pages in the correct order. These markings ensured that the folded sheets, often 16 pages, were gathered sequentially before being bound together into a complete book block.” Google AI