Spine view of my Buttonhole Binding

Making a Buttonhole Binding Book

It’s been a while since I got my needle and thread out to make a hardbound book. More recently I’ve been doing the no-stitch Australian (Reverse) Piano Hinge Binding, or using my Zutter machine with metal spiral binding. But later this week I’m planning on attending an art show opening, and I thought it’d be a good opportunity to do some live event sketching.

I only have large sketchbooks, and I wanted a compact one that I could hold in one hand, and wander around to sketch. So what’s a girl to do? ….. make one.

There’s more chance of being an incognito sketcher with a sketchbook this size!

The Cover and Pages

I decided a page should be 7cm x 8cm, simply because I had two pieces of 100% cotton watercolour paper, that were off-cuts from some paintings I did this week, and I didn’t want to be fussing around with trimming, or waste any of the paper. So this book was 32 sides, 16 pages, 8 signatures.

I found some cardboard from the bottom of a Zara Home shopping bag, which was plenty sturdy enough for a book of this size. It wasn’t too much trouble to cut the cardboard to size and made the cut-out in the centre of the spine. I added sellotape across the cardboard where I’d scored it to bend, just so that it was robust enough to be open and closed a lot without it perishing.

I used some recycled material for the cover. This green fabric is from an old shirt, and I’ve used it to cover quite a few small books in the past. After gluing down the material on the outside, I finished off the inside of the front and back cover with some watercolour paper I’d made with pink and orange paint, and some gold metallic paint.

The Stitching

All the buttonhole bound books I’ve seen, show the thread at the top and bottom of the book over the spine, but not on the part of the signatures that are visible through the buttonhole. It’s this looped stitch that gives this binding style its name.

I wanted the thread to show up the entire length of the book, so I bound my book so that the thread runs through the signatures in the cut-out section in the spine. I wonder if the bookbinding purists are judging me? Or if this is an established variation to bind a buttonhole book?

Project Summary

This book took an about an hour to make, and I’m really happy with the end results, especially since this is the first time I’ve used this binding style. Maybe next time I’ll used the conventional method for sticking the signatures to the spine.

The best thing about this book is that it’s nearly all recycled items. I really love rummaging through all the stuff I have in my art room to see what I can pull together and combine into one project.

If you’re interested in different types of bookbinding stitches, I’ve got a popular post with a lot of different options – I’m adding this buttonhole to the list of styles I’ve tried. Maybe one of them will inspire you to put your recycled materials to good use.

Here’s a clear and concise video on YouTube from SeaLemon about how to bind a book using the buttonhole stitch.