On Sunday afternoons a few years ago you would have found me sharing the joys of making Japanese Stab Stitch books with a small group of craft lovers at Artisan Community Art Studio in Dorset. Written during the last of my bookbinding courses that year, this blog post hopes to inspire and help you to make these kind of books.
You'll find top tips for making Stab Stitch books, details about the best materials and tools - and why you'll want to use them. Plus, you'll get an overview of traditional Japanese papers and decorative designs, and see some contemporary examples of how these books can be used for your own art and community projects.
Read on for all that, but if you just want to know what tools you need as a beginner, check out my Guide to Bookbinding Tools, Equipment and Materials. And if you just need to know where to find your supplies, head directly to my Directory of Bookbinding Suppliers. It's a pdf digital download that tells you where to find Chiyogami papers, Japanese tools, waxed linen thread, text weight papers and everything else you could possible need for making books.
And if you're a photographer, artist or illustrator who'd like a little one-to-one guidance and support to make your own books, my online Mentoring Sessions might be helpful.
With plenty of tea (and sometimes cake) to hand, I've shown my group of budding bookbinders how to make the 4-hole, Noble and Hemp Leaf bindings, so far. The 4-Hole is the simplest style and forms the basis of all the Stab Stitch bindings. It's not difficult to make and is the perfect place for you to start. Follow that with the Noble, which adds details to the head (top) and tail (bottom) of the spine.
Left to Right: Tortoiseshell, Noble, 4-Hole Sketchbooks stitched with recycled, handmade cotton rag paper.
And then there's the Tortoiseshell. It looks like a one-of-a-kind style, but is in fact the 4-Hole binding with the addition of some extra stitches either side of the original four sewing stations.
After that you're ready to try the Hemp Leaf. This looks complicated, but you start off simply by making the Noble binding, and then adding extra stitches, which evoke the leaves of the Hemp plant.
Hemp Leaf binding on a sketchbook with flower petals in the cotton rag paper covers.
In our next session, I'll be introducing my group to the Tortoiseshell Japanese Stab Stitch pattern. I'll also be demonstrating how to make and attach decorative spine corners and traditional folded covers for the Stab Stitch books using very special Japanese papers.
Traditional Japanese papers are renowned for being lightweight yet incredibly strong. These qualities - the holy grail of paper - make them ideal for many aspects of bookbinding, from covering books in decorative Chiyogami and Katazome-Shi papers, to doing conservation and repair work with Kozo and Gampi, interleaving albums with various lightweight tissues and making text blocks and title strips with machine-made Satogami.
Hemp Leaf with plant fibre and Satogami papers; Noble with Chiyogami.
I used plant-fibre paper for this small Hemp Leaf notebook, shown on the left. I do love its colour and texture, but I was less keen on its tendency to tear a little around the sewing stations. The title strip is Satogami paper that I tore by hand to enhance the tactile feel of the book. Traditionally, the title strip in this position is placed no more than 3mm from the book's head and foredge. I used Chiyogami paper for the Noble binding on the right; it responded much better than the plant-fibre paper.
Below are some images of the exquisitely beautiful Chiyogami papers my bookbinding group will be using in our next session. I selected these patterns to give an overview of traditional Japanese designs. Floral designs, especially cherry blossoms, are quintessentially Japanese.
Cranes are a traditional motif frequently found in Japan; on textiles, decorative papers, bank notes and company brand marks. The Red-Crowned Crane pictured in the Chiyogami paper above symbolises luck and longevity throughout East Asia. In Japan, they are known as 'tanchōzuru' and are said to live for one thousand years, granting favours in return for sacrifices.
Traditional Japanese decorative designs also include geometric shapes. They provide more complex patterns, often suggesting movement - perhaps the waves of a choppy ocean, reminiscent of Hokusai's paintings. And for a bit of fun, I've chosen a sheet of Katazome-Shi paper for its cheerful bird song design.
Small sheets of Chiyogami are widely available but these are often only around 20cm square. Check out my Directory of Bookbinding Suppliers to find out where you can buy full sheets, as well as Japanese tools.
It's true that Japanese papers are more expensive than others. They're now (2025) around £8.50 for a full sheet of Chiyogami - but their beauty and practical qualities make the spend worth it. Firstly, your books will look attractive and authentic. Secondly, the paper responds well to folding and is durable enough for regular handling. And thirdly, you'll love making books with them because they're just so beautiful!
But if you're just starting out making Stab Stitch books, why not practice with whatever paper you already have to hand or can get your hands on cheaply. You could then treat yourself to some Chiyogami or Katazome-Shi when you're confident you know what you're doing.
Each sheet of Chiyogami is large enough to make covers for three A5 landscape Japanese Stab Stitch books, or one A5 landscape and one A4 portrait book. There will be some paper leftover, which you can use to make corner pieces. The paper is long grain, in case you were wondering - don't forget to keep the grain direction of your materials running parallel to the spine of you book.
Scroll down for more advice on choosing text papers and binding thread, overcoming common problems and ideas for using the Stab Stitch books.
Nothing is better than linen thread for making books. Strong yet flexible, it's the preferred thread of bookbinders, especially for exposed spine sewings like the Japanese Stab Stitch books. It's good to get started with whatever you have to hand at home - why spend money when you don't have to? - but it's easy to get frustrated and blame yourself (lack of skills, doubtful craftsmanship) when things don't go well. In reality, an experienced bookbinder wouldn't fare too much better than you if they were using less-than-ideal materials.
Crawford waxed linen thread - all the colours of the rainbow!
Wax helps the stitching grip to itself and also helps to stop the paper tearing. You could get some unwaxed linen thread and a beeswax or hydrocarbon vegan wax block and wax it yourself. My Directory has suggestions for where to find Crawford waxed linen thread and unwaxed options, too.
For your bookblock (the pages inside the book), I'd recommend starting with anything from lightweight 80, 90 to 100gsm regular printer paper for beginners. Tip: fold the lightest weight papers in half and bind along the open edge, to make a traditional 'pouch book'. You could use 120 or 140gsm cartridge paper for writing and drawing. And you could even try heavier (thicker) pastel or watercolour papers (but bear in mind that they work best on larger, and landscape format, books). For a very fine, lightweight binding, you could use Satogami if you'd like a general-purpose Japanese lightweight paper.
Even those of us well-seasoned in our craft find some aspects of it more challenging than others. If you're new to making Japanese Stab Stitch books, here are some common tricky bits, and ideas for how to overcome them.
A common stumbling-block for beginners is getting up to five passes of thread through a single sewing station (as with the Hemp Leaf Stab Stitch). Needles are wiggled, frowns appear, a lot of force is applied and still the needle just won't pull through the sewing station.
Also, check that the sewing station is as wide at the back of the book as well as the front. This will help your needle pass smoothly through each sewing station. If you're struggling, try standing up to pierce - your bodyweight will help you get through the bookblock. If you're still struggling, your bookblock is too thick. Don't forget to use a suitable awl cushion such as a piece of cork, polystyrene, etc.
English awl; Japanese awl
And which awl should you use? Japanese awls are beautifully forged, typically used with a hammer. If you don't have those, English awls are comfortable to use thanks to the curved wooden handle that fits beautifully in the palm of your hand.
A lot of bookbinding activities involve maths, such as figuring out the placement of sewing stations (the holes through which you sew). If maths isn't your strong suit, don't be put off trying your hand at making books. I'm not brilliant with numbers, yet with practice I've become proficient at making the calculations required to make all sorts of books.
If you're making books at home and the maths ever starts to feel too much, follow the advice I give to my students - trust your eye. It's amazing how accurate the eye can be in determining the correct placement of a sewing station, usually to within a millimetre.
By the end of the course, each person in my bookbinding group will have made each of the four traditional Japanese Stab Stitch books, culminating in a stunning Tortoiseshell binding with traditional decorative corners and covers, just like this:
Tortoiseshell with Chiyogami corners and covers
In our final session, I'll be encouraging my bookbinders to design their own Stab Stitch patterns (it can be done - just take a look on Pinterest) and make their own personal projects using these binding styles.
Blank books are fantastic as sketchbooks and journals, and a great place to start. But I want to inspire my workshop participants to think about content ideas and the kinds of projects that would be brilliantly showcased with a traditional Japanese book. So I bring along some 'real life' examples of Stab Stitch books, including an annual review, a community recipe book, a textile stitch sampler and a published book about Japanese craft and product design.
Hemp Leaf printed annual review
Here, pages with text, illustrations and photographs were compiled by a small team of people as a year-in-review. The pages were printed on an ordinary home office printer and then I bound them into book format using the Hemp Leaf pattern, with simple card covers. This is a low-cost way of producing community projects; the great advantage of stab stitch styles is that they do not require any complicated page layout or imposition.
All you have to remember with binding printed, handwritten or drawn pages is to leave adequate margins on the left of each page to allow for the binding, plus a little extra space to compensate for the area 'lost' by the curve that forms as you turn the pages.
Menegazzo, R & Piotti, S: Wa: The Essence of Japanese Design, published by Phaidon, 2014
I wouldn't recommend making a Japanese Stab Stitch book quite as thick as the one above. This is a published work produced by a commercial printer, but it demonstrates that a Stab Stitch book will lie open on a desk, if its page size and weight provide sufficient drape. It's also wonderful reading if you're interested in Japanese design.
Stitch Sampler - this fascinating book, made with a Noble binding, has a wide variety of creative embroidery samples attached to each page.
If your inclusions are quite thick, such as these embroidery samples, be sure to include spine spacers in your binding; these should be as thick as your inclusions to prevent swell. Use pieces of thick card and make sure they're the same height as your bookblock and wide enough to be caught by your spine stitching.
Bind your own artwork. Artist and illustrator Donna Enticknap came to one of my earlier courses, where she used her own cyanotype prints as covers for this beautiful 4-Hole book.
Stab Stitch bindings are a regular feature of my bookbinding workshops and courses, and I can help you make these books with my online Mentoring Sessions. But if that's not right for you, I hope this blog post has given you some useful information and encouragement to try making these books. If you have any questions that I can help with, please leave a comment below.
Susan the bookbinder
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What do those professional bookbinding terms mean? Can I use any kind of glue? Where do I find waxed linen thread? Do I need special paper? Is that awl as good as the one I already have? I hear you. I was you.
Donna
February 07, 2019
I was very much enjoying this post, and then as I got to the end, surprise! there’s my cyanotype book!
I’m bookmarking this post, I definitely want to try out those fancy styles, especially the tortoiseshell. And I’m intrigued by those paper corners..