Quick and dirty 🤣 a bookbinding tutorial

My zero waste notebooks, waiting to be used, or uploaded to the shop.

lol

I promised you a tutorial for the zero waste notebooks and here it is.

I call it quick and dirty, because I seriously Do. Not. Measure anything for these notebooks.

Eyeballing it all the way, baby!

Ok what you need:

● paper. All kinds of paper. Look in your recycling basket. Look around your house. I use anything I can get my hands on that has a decent amount of unprinted space. Paper shopping bags (since we only use cloth shopping bags, I have enlisted my neighbours to keep theirs for me), sugar comes in paper bags, so does flour! Some pet foods do too! (We get 25 pound bags of flour and sugar every few months, so there is loads of paper in those, but the small 2 or 5 pound ones are paper too)

● String. Any kind of string. Garden twine for a rustic look, embroidery floss for some colour, crochet cotton... etc. You can wax the string or not.

● a needle. Ideally one that has an eye big enough for the thread you picked lol. Does not have to be a sharp needle!! (I am using one of the hawthorn needles I carved. They work great, but they are sharp lol. You can carefully break off the tip though to make it blunt)

● clips, Bobby pins, paperclips, anything to keep the pages in line when you punch the hole and sew them together. I use clips I bought specifically for this task, as I frequently bind books and use them a lot. They were invented for sewing, but work amazing for bookbinding too. I like things capable of double duty!

● an awl, or a nail, or a metal knitting needle, or an ice pick lol. Anything pointy that is strong enough to punch through your layers of paper.

● a thick, old book. Like a telephone book, or any other old book about that size

● an Iron. Trust me!

● a ruler, because I lied and there is a tiny bit of measuring, but you *can* eyeball it.

● I use a knife to cut the paper, but you can use scissors, or a paper cutter. It all depends on how comfortable you are slicing paper vs. cutting. I like uneven, rustic edges, but some people may not.

● optional: a little charm, a stick, or whatever you like to make your notebook yours and make it look pretty.

Ok lets get started.

Step 1: Take the bottom off the bags. I have come to the conclusion that it is not worth fiddling with the glued flaps. I cut it off. (You can keep it because it still makes a great plant pot liner etc, but for now, cut it off.) Also take off the handles and put aside. They are great for a bunch of other things. I never toss them out.

Then I usually just carefully tear it apart at the glue line, but you can also cut it for straighter edges.

Slicing the bottom off the paper shopping bag

Dismantled paper shopping bag, sliced off bottom and handles

Step 2: Decide how big you want the notebook to be. Mine are very approximately around 8x6 inches (20x15 cm) give or take.

So I fold my paper in a way that will give me the most pages of the size I want. Then I cut them to size. Again. Eyeballing it.

All pages cut roughly to size. I am not worried about straight edges in these notebooks, but you certainly can use a papercutter.

Once I have all the paper I want (I use about two paper bags for one notebook in my size, approximately 10-12 pages. That makes 20-24 double pages, that comes out to 40-44 single pages to write on, if that makes sense.)

Step 3: I go and iron the pages. Trust me. They lay flatter that way! Make sure to be careful on the bits that had the handles attached. There may be glue left on the paper. It won't hurt the notebook, or the iron, but I am not a fan of cleaning my iron, so I simply pop a cleaning rag over those pages and that works. The heat will liquefy the glue, but it hardens right away again. You can try and rub it off. Check it out and do what makes you happy. Use the pages with the glue, or toss them into the recycling bin. I tend to use them.

Step 4: Fold each page in half and lay them inside each other. If you have different colour paper you can now alternate them, or just chuck the whole thing together as they come.

Step 5: Next you will clip all pages together. Make sure the folds are really tight against each other on the spine. It will make sewing so much easier! Clip away until you feel that the pages will not slip around on you. Use as many, or as few clips as you feel comfortable.

Step 6 : When the pages are restrained, you take the ruler (or not) and mark three dots on the inside of the notebook along the spine. Two dots about an inch in from either end (less, if you are making a tiny notebook) and one right smack dab in the center. We will use a three hole pamphlet binding for this.

Top.view of the pages clipped together.

Ruler on the clipped notebook pages

Step 7: Open up the old book, or telephone book (who still has a telephone book? I miss them) and plop the notebook sandwich right into the crease. Open it and then use the awl, ot nail, or what ever you have chosen to make holes where you made the marks along the spine.

Here are the clipped pages on top of an old cookery book.

Step 8: Sewing is next. Take your string, at least two and a half times as long as your notebook is tall. Thread your needle and start sewing. Usually one would start on the center hole from the inside. However, I want to hang a charm from the spine of the book on the outside, so I am flipping the script, as it were. The procedure is the same inside, or out, so if you prefer a smooth spine outside, simply start on the inside to sew.

Showing the closed book with my needle inserted into the center hole on the outside of the spine

Inside view of the needle coming in from the outside in the center hole of the spine

Insert your needle into the center hole (from the outside of the notebook to the inside in my case) pull the thread and leave a tail about the width of your notebook. You can clip the tail down, so it won't accidentally pull through the hole. Once inside the notebook, pick one of the other two holes and push the needle through, back to the outside of the book. Now SKIP the center hole and go to the last one you haven't used yet and stick the needle through that hole, back to the inside of the book. Do not worry about having the thread taut yet. That will come in a bit. Once on the inside of the book, thread the needle again through the center hole towards the outside of the notebook. Making sure that a) you don't splice the thread already there and b) you need to come up on the opposite side of the tail that went in first. There should be a thread dividing the first tail from the one still on your needle.

Remove the needle. Holding fast to both tails. To tighten the binding, simply pull on the tails, but be careful to pull in the direction from which they come on the inside of the book. Otherwise you will tear the paper!!! So instead of just pulling straight up, you will have to pull them tight parallel to the pages, if that makes sense....

Once inside the book, chose one of the other two holes and bring the needle back to the outside

Once back outside, skip the center hole and go back inside through the third hole. This will create a string going across the center hole with the starting tail on one side if it.

Step 9: Knot the two tails several times over the center thread, tie on the charm, and presto! Notebook!

Outside of journal. I knotted the ends over the center string and then threaded a crochet flower motive onto it. Then made a big knot to keep it from sliding off and cut the thrrad tails short.

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