How to make your own book- Part 3: Special features

Before I move into describing how to bind your text block into the covers I thought I'd pause to talk about some special feature you may want to incorporate into your book.  Reason being that this is the perfect time to add features like an inbuilt book mark and book headbands.

Let's talk about adding a bookmark first.  These are often found in larger book such as bibles but not exclusively. My hard cover copy of 'The wit and wisdom of Discworld' also has a bookmark built in.  You can use many different types of material for a bookmark.  Traditionally these are made of a woven thread such as rayon.  It can be hard to track down, but I've found it once or twice in Spotlight, a larger sewing supply store in my area where it can be found with the laces and other trims.  Colours tend to be limited even if you can track it down but if you were keen you could try dying them (make sure they are dry and the ink doesn't rub off before you use them if you try this- otherwise you'll end up with dye rubbed into your book pages).

An alternative could be a ribbon in a coordinating colour, or you could braid some embroidery cotton or floss together- as long as your bookmark material is reasonably flat (otherwise over time it might deform your pages when sandwiched in your book for a long time).   Attaching your bookmark is very simple- just glue it to the spine of your text block, ensuring it is long enough to go up, over the top of the spine and then down past the bottom of the page.  If you really want to ensure it will be in place for the long term, you might prefer to sew it onto your text block spine.

Now the headbands.  If you look at a hardcover book, you might notice there is a line of coloured threads at the top and bottom of the spine.  This is called a headband.  Historically, these are added to books to help prevent wear over time.  Think about a book sitting on a bookshelf in a row of other books.  You want to take Volume 2 of your Discworld Stamp Yearbooks off the shelf.  What do you do?  Put one or two fingers at the top of the spine and use downward pressure to pull the book outwards so you can then grip it.  That downward pressure over time is potentially going to damage your spine, pulling the spine of the cover away from the text.  What the headband does is provide reinforcement to the book spine to prevent this happening.

That said, these days most headbands are not added to perform this function, they are instead used simply as decorative elements.  The traditional sort is sewn over a leather band onto the spine of the text block.  This is the method I used on the book I bound below (on the left).  This was made using the excellent tutorial found on the Pied Crow Press blog.  The book on the right is 'The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld' and uses (as far as I can see) a pre-sewn headband that is for decorative purposes only.

Two different types of headband (and an example of a built in bookmark in the book on the right)

If you want to make a pre-sewn band, here's a fairly method I've come up with that requires a minimum of sewing skill.  The great advantage of either method is that you can use whatever colours you can get your hands on- and embroidery silks for example come in a LOT of different shades and types including silk, rayon, metalic threads, glow-in-the-dark and even colour changing threads (very very cool if you can get your hands on them!)

You will need:

• Some fabric- I use evenweave fabric (commonly used in cross stitch).  The even weave will help you keep the spacing of your sewing nice and even.
• Some pretty threads!  I'm planning on the cover of this book to be a purply sort of colour so I've chosen to use a purple rayon embroidery floss and a glow-in-the-dark embroidery floss (just because it's cool :P)
• Needle (enough said!)
• Bit of glue.  You could use a special 'Fray Stop' glue but any glue will work- pva for example.

Cut material, ready to use and and the threads

 Cut your fabric so it will be much longer than you need and about 5cm wide (exact width doesn't matter you just want enough so that if it frays, it won't fray up into your stitching.  Thread two needles with each colour.  I like to use 3 or 4 strands if I'm using typical 6 stranded embroidery floss but this is up to you.  More strands means your colours will be wider spaced, fewer strands means the colours will be closer together.

Fold your material in half, long ways.  The folded edge is what you'll be stitching over.  Using your first thread, make a stitch over the fold, attaching the thread any way you like- the only thing that will be seen at the end is the stitches over the fold so you don't have to be too neat.  Leave your thread hanging and use your other needle and thread to make a stitch right next to it.  Just repeat this pattern of stitching- the only real trick is to be careful not to tangle the threads together as you work.

Continue stitching until your headband is a few mm longer than the spine of the book you intend to use it on (see below).  Once it is the length you wish, tie off the ends. To ensure nothing frays, make sure the knots are not going to be inadvertently trimmed off.

To help ensure things don't fray, use glue on the material well away from the sewn threads (they often discolour and have a bad texture if glued.  You can see where the wet glue is on my headband below (the darker colour material).  You can also see my ultra high tech drying stand!

When it is dry, you can trim the headband much closer to the stitches (but try not to cut the stitches themselves or they will fray).  This can then be glued onto your book's text block.  If you are adding a bookmark, add this first.  Then trim the headband to size (it should just wrap around the spine) and glue the headbands into place, so the headband sticks up no more than a mm (or so just the colours of the thread are showing).

  There's all sorts of things you can play around with- there is no reason you could not add more colours, use different threads, even try adding seed beads for something very different.  Good luck!