New Sewing Frame

This past week, Daniel made a sewing frame for me. I've been doing all my cord bound books without a sewing frame. (I can just hear all the gasping from all you book artists!) It was a pain but doable and worked ok. The sewing frame is so much nicer to work with though and results in straighter cords.

I found the instructions for how to make a sewing frame while reading a book from the library by Josep Cambras. It's titled The Complete Book of Bookbinding. I found it's a great book for any bookbinder's library. You can read my book review below the photos of the sewing frame and the book I sewed on it this morning.




Book Review: The Complete Book of Bookbinding by Josep Cambras

I wouldn't say that it's the "complete" book because really, it skims the surface of several different techniques and processes of bookbinding. It can give a beginning/intermediate bookbinder an idea of the bookbinding world and the tools used in it. It provides a brief history of bookbinding which really was brief but still worth the read and the beautiful photographs of old books. It shows the tools of the trade and goes through the process of binding a book, gold tooling the cover, doing raised spines, making boxes and even shows a few artistic books at the back. It really skims the surface on several things but gives you a start with enough know-how so that you can continue your search on bookbinding elsewhere. It gives instructions for making a sewing frame from home, but it failed to give us directions on how to set the cords up and actually use the sewing frame. (We found the instructions elsewhere online for this and we used nails instead of expensive sewing keys which worked quite well.)

Overall, this book would be great for someone who is interested in the bookbinding world or for those who would like instructions on how to make a sewing frame.