I was interested to find that you can buy ready made text blocks that just need ‘casing in’ and thought I would give it a go. It does make the whole process easier but I have to say that I’m disappointed with the result. The finished book looks a bit bland because the cover lining paper is plain cream so you don’t get the colourful ‘zing’ from a choice of nicely contrasting papers. The book cloth spine and the cover papers make opportunities for contrast, I suppose. It’s a nice enough book but not an experiment I shall be repeating. The text blocks are available as address books and album inserts and I think as diaries, so it would be useful in these instances but on the whole I prefer the handmade look of books I have sewn by hand and I also get much more satisfaction doing it ‘properly’. This felt like cheating!




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it looks impressive to me Diane…..love the stripes…the paper looks like seer sucker fabric in the photos…..very effective with the red….
I suppose I can still be creative with the covers – even if the inside is a bit of a cheat! Some folks might prefer the machine made innards to my home made efforts!
it looks great! but i do understand the hesitation.
to me, it’s almost like cheating. the beauty of making books is making the entire book. not just gluing the text block in…
great color choices though. :-)
Thanks! I’m glad you agree. You can’t really call it a ‘handmade book’ if a machine has made half of it either! It’s actually a ‘handmade cover’!