Bookstitching or . . . ‘The Trials and Tribulations of Making a Book by Hand’

While brainstorming what sorts of fun things to include in the Halloween giveaway, one of the ideas I had was to put together a little book of Cinders & Sparrows marginalia called The Blackbird’s Handbook. I figured I had plenty of things to put inside it - like the entries about the haunted rooms on the interactive castle floorplan, and some details about the herbology and spells, encyclopedic creature stuff, a recipe for sandy shortbread moons, things that didn’t have space in the book itself. Also, I had seen my mom, who is a crafty lady, make some really beautiful miniature books. She agreed to help make this one, and it all seemed very doable, very ‘this-will-be-a-fun-lil-side-project’.

WELL . . . it was super fun, truly, but I wayyyyy underestimated how involved the process is. By the time I did realise it, I was a dozen hours in and there was no escape. (Did we know book-making involves needle and thread? Knot-tying? A bone folder? Did we even know what a bone folder was? We did not. Or at least, I did not.)

Here is the finished product, looking all innocent and lovely. Do not trust it.

So we got to work. Whenever I was back in Switzerland, Mom and I would sit down and do a little here, a little there. The process of bookmaking started with. . .

The Layout

This was the best part. Writing books! I can do this! So I filled this one up with little pictures of herbs, and art, and pretty fonts. A delight. It did not last, because lurking just around the corner were. . .

The Signatures

Here are all the false starts and attempts at organising the pages. I’m pretty sure those aren’t even all of them. When I tell you we printed huuuundreds of pages for a little 70 page book. . .

Organising the signatures was absolutely the most difficult part. It doesn’t sound difficult. A signature is a collection of 16 pages that are folded inside each other. And yet they don’t go 1-16, oh no. They do some weird numerical stuff that is stressful to even think about, something like 1-3-2-4-16-932-5, etc. And at first I made the PDF without page numbers. I really thought, ‘THIS IS A LITTLE BOOK. IT DOESN’T NEED PAGE NUMBERS.’ Oh, it needed them. I wonder how actual publishing people do this. Surely there’s a program for it, and I just don’t know about it?

The Printing

This should have been fairly straightforward after the signatures debacle. It wasn’t. And at this point you’re probably like, “Ok Stefan, you’re being dramatic, anyone knows how to print, maybe you’re just really inept??” And maybe so, but here’s the thing: we bought super fancy paper at like 5 bucks a page, because we wanted the book to be snazzy. But we didn’t buy a lot of it (because again, 5 bucks a page), and that made the printing process rather fraught. There was no room for error. You know how sometimes a printer will be a little brat and will crumple up your pages and spit them out at you? Or not spit them out at all, forcing you to claw and rip at the pages until they comes out in a thousand little scraps? Yeah. We couldn’t let that happen. Hence, the loads of practice runs. But we managed, which brought us to. . .

Bookstitching!

This was vaguely therapeutic, a balm for the soul after all the twin deserts of Signatures and Printer-wrangling.

A practice run on paper that was called ‘Elephant Skin’ which is a bit nasty.

Cover making

Book covers are some of my favourite things. To look at. I didn’t do any of this. Mom painted this lovely cover in black and purple, and added those ornate metal corner caps, and made little textural things. Here is a close-up of the castle, which perfectly matches the floorplan.

The Best Bookmark Ribbon of all the Bookmark Ribbons

Because any handbook to an ancient haunted castle needs to have a suitably elaborate bookmark ribbon, Mom also made this truly cool one. Hanging from it is a letter ‘B’ for Brydgeborn, or Blackbird, or Blimp, but most likely for Brydgeborn. A black crow’s feather. A silver Treskgilliam Tree. A tiny key. And a bottle of real herbs and rose-petals!

And that was that! We made a book. It’s gorgeous, and I’m super happy we did it, and I will use this opportunity to say a huge thank you to my mom who was very patient during the whole process and actually made it all come together. Writing is a lot easier.