Discovery - Five Stab Stitch Bookbinding

Recently, I've taught myself how to do a couple simple forms of bookbinding, so that I could start creating notebooks and journals. There are lots of great resources online, which is how I have learned what to do, but I wanted to take you through my learning process with a little how-to along the way. As with anything, there is a lot of trial and error (and quite a few needle pokes, if you're me), so hopefully I can save you some of that if you decide to give bookbinding a go!

I'm starting with a very simple form of bookbinding, called Five Stab Stitch binding. This is what I am using for my smaller and more lightweight notebooks. The upside to this style of binding is that it's easy to learn, only takes a few minutes to do once you get the hang of it, and it's flexible with what type of materials you use for the book. The downside is that your books will never lay flat easily (or at all, really), and you can't make books too thick, or it becomes too difficult to stab through all the layers. These problems are solved by a type of binding called Coptic Stitching, which I will address in a separate blog post!

(Please forgive the flash-tastic photos. And don't forget you can click any of them to make them bigger.)

So, to begin, let's look at the materials and tools you need:

• Card stock for the covers
• Plain paper for the pages inside
• Binder Clips to hold it all together
• An awl, to stab through the pages
• Another piece of paper marked as a guide of where you want your holes to be
• Thread or cord of some sort (I am using hemp thread)
• A sturdy needle (some sort of large embroidery or bookbinding needle

Step one is the assemble the covers and pages and line them up as neatly as possible. I cut a piece of A4 card stock in half for the covers, and then this particular journal has 15 sheets of 100% recycled A4 plain paper cut in half to form 30 pages inside. (I also tend to trim a smidge (yes, that is a technical term) extra off the plain paper pages so that there is no chance they peek past the covers.) Once the paper is lined up, you bind everything tightly with the clips. I like to use one in between each hole I am going to punch, so I don't bend the book too much while I'm doing so.

The next step is to punch the holes for the stitching with the awl. What you probably can't see in the photos is that I've scored the card stock where I will punch. This allows you to neatly open the cover after it's stitched and ensures your holes are aligned. I'm using 30 pages because it is pretty much the perfect thickness. It gives you a decent amount of pages, but isn't too difficult to punch through. I've done one notebook with 50 pages, and let me tell you, my muscles sure got a work out. As you can see on the left, I put my template in place under the binder clip handles to hold it in place as I punch the holes. When the five holes are punched, I flip back the clip handles, but leave them in place for the stitching.

Now, if you're like me, at this point you will spend about 20 minutes trying to get fat, clunky hemp thread through a tiny needle hole. Yes, I have a huge, sturdy needle, but for some reason it has a tiny thread hole! Well, maybe hemp thread isn't the absolute best choice for bookbinding, but I love its texture and natural look. Ah well...

So, when you're finally ready to begin stitching, you start at the very centre hole, threading from the back to the front. Leave a few centimetres to tie off later, as shown on the left. Then you stitch through the next hole above the center one, from front to back. At this point, you wrap the thread around the spine, and pass through the same hole again. Then you stitch through the topmost hole, from back to front. Again, you stitch around the spine, passing through the topmost hole for a second time. Then you stitch around the top of the book, pulling the thread through the topmost hole for a third time. At this point, I have used the awl to help widen my holes just a smidge to make sure the thread goes through smoothly. Just additional complications from using a thick thread, I suppose.

At this point, you thread back down through the hole second from the top. The easiest way to describe it is that you've got thread either on one side of the spine or the other as you made your way to the top of the book. Now we are going to lay down thread on the opposite sides of the spine. So, if you are doubling up thread at any point, you've taken a misstep and will need to figure out at what point my convoluted instructions have lost you.

And so, you should have the thread at the back of the spine with the tail you left through the centre hole staring at you. What you want to do is skip the centre hole entirely and thread from back to front through the second hole from the bottom. You can see this illustrated in the photo to the right. You should lay down the tail so it faces the front of the book and make sure the line of thread sits on the crease on the spine side of the tail. This is the trickiest bit of the whole process, so if you can sort that out from the way I've described it, you're a champ at this bookbinding business. (And a champ at deciphering what I mean. Seriously, can I hire you to translate things between me and my husband? He never seems to get what I'm talking about.)

So, the bottom half of the book is stitched exactly like the top half, just in the other direction. Your thread should be coming out of the front of the book from the second lowest hole. You should stitch around the spine and back through this same hole, and then proceed front to back through the bottom hole. Just as you did at the top, you stitch around the spine and through the bottom hole, and then around the bottom and through the bottom hole a third time. Once you stitch from back to front back through the second lowest hole, your book should look much like mine does on the right-hand side.

To finish, you stitch back through the centre hole, from front to back. You want to keep the thread on the spine side of the thread you laid down previously when you skipped the centre hole at the back. You then stitch around the spine and back through the centre hole, still staying on the spine side. It should look like the photo on the left. At this point, you simply take the needle off the thread and tie it together with the tail you left at the start. Make sure you tie around the thread so that it's nice and secure.

And that's it! Now you have a notebook set to have its cover decorated and then it's ready for use. Below you'll find all the steps simplified as a reference, so you don't have to pour through the whole explanation again and again.

1. Assemble the pages and clip together with binder clips.
2. Punch the holes along the scored crease of the cardstock, using your template for spacing.
3. Stitch up through the centre hole, leaving a tail of a few centimetres.
4. Stitch down through the hole second from the top, then around the spine and back through the same hole.
5. Stitch from back to front through the topmost hole. Then, stitch around the spine and through the same hole, and then again over the top of the book and through the hole a third time.
6. Stitch back down through the hole second from the top.
7. SKIP the centre hole, and stitch through the second hole from the bottom, leaving the tail on the side closest to the front of the book.
8. Stitch around the spine and back through the hole second from the bottom.
9. Stitch through the lowest hole, then around the spine back through it, and around the bottom and through it again.
10. Stitch back up through the hole second from the bottom.
11. Stitch through the centre hole, keeping the thread on the spine side.
12. Stitch around the spine and through the centre hole one last time.
13. Remove the needle and tie off the remaining thread with the tail you left at the beginning OVER the bit of thread left from skipping the centre hole previously.
14. And done!
    

I hope that inspires you to give it a go yourself, assuming I have made it seem simple, rather than more complicated. If you have any questions about the proccess, feel free to comment here or take a look around the net. There are a lot of good resources out there!