Having finally stitched all my pages for my Book of days, the next task was to bind them together.

I’ve been pondering for a few days how to bind my Book of Days. I’ve never done bookbinding, when I made my Stitchbook a couple of years ago I had embroidered the pages as double page spreads, so it was fairly straight forward to just whip-stitch the pages together.

This time the pages were individual squares, so it wasn’t so easy. I was also concerned that due to the folding at the corners, the pages were thinner in the middle than at the corners, I didn’t want the spine to have an hourglass figure!

I searched on pinterest for binding textile books, but most images were of paper pages with a fabric cover. I did however come across the term coptic stitching. I did a bit more searching on my computer for information on coptic stitching. It seems to be a traditional stitch for binding paper books, creating a sort of twisted chain stitch on the spine, which can be pretty decorative. The problem was that all the instructions involved a long stitch down the centre of a fold of paper, I didn’t have the equivalent of a centre fold.

I decided to do my version of the coptic stitch, I’m calling it the Coptic Creek stitch!!! I took photos at the various stages of the stitch so if anyone is in a similar predicament, this is how I did it…

I divided the spine into 4 and marked the 5 points with a pin. I used a perle thread, I wanted something stronger than DMC and I had the perfect colour on a reel of Anchor perle. I used a double thread for extra strength. Having secured at the back, the first pair of pages stitching was a bit of a fudge but I then got a pattern;

I stitched through the edge of the next page, trying to catch a couple of threads of linen on each side, not just the whip-stitch…

I then looped the thread under the stitch TWO pages before…

Before pulling it all the way through I took the needle through the loop of thread, making something a bit like a twisted chain, I tried to always loop the same way…

I then pulled the ‘knot’ neatly into place and carried on to the next stitch…

I did five rows in total, I found it easier in the middle rows to have a marker pin at the other side too to aim for. I didn’t pull the middle ones as firmly as the end rows either so it would sit flat. At one point I was considering putting beads as spacers in the three middle rows, but I decided I was over-complicating things!

The book feels quite fluid at the moment, which I quite like, the pages are not tightly stitched together. It also lies open flat with a neat row of knots just visible…

True Coptic stitch is designed to be visible, if I’d made my front and back cover as separate squares I could have bound it altogether like this. However I’m planning to make a wrap around cover, so watch this space!

I’ve linked all the posts about the making of this book on the page above called Fabric Books.