In depth look for the stitching process
With step by step animations and text explanations you can always refer to the specific points during the stitching process.
With step by step animations and text explanations you can always refer to the specific points during the stitching process.
Congratulations, you have a one of a kind, wooden notebook items box with custom swirled covers.
With all the materials and step by step instructions, in less than 30 mins you’ll have the experience making your own hand-stitched Coptic notebooks.
Before beginning to stitch our notebook, we can start with punching holes on the spines.
Our goal is to make three holes through which the needle can easily pass. We stack all 5 signatures on top of each other and put them on top of a wooden cover. Using a pencil or the tip of the needle, we mark vertically aligned dots.
With our needle, or punching wooden tool, we puncture the paper where the marks are visible. We can separate each spine and carefully punch holes for each spine. After some practice, you can apply pressure to the wooden cover and simply push the wooden punch tool directly into the marks to make holes in one go as shown in the figure above.
Your kit comes with three pieces of waxed thread. Each one is long enough to bind a notebook.
Depending on how many pages we’re going to use, we pick one and thread it through the eye of the needle.
We tie a knot on the long side of the thread, so the stitch can be fixed at the point where we start.
The classic Blind Knot will do, just to be sure we can coil the thread 2-3 times before tying the knot.
We start by bonding the back cover and the first signature. To do that, we enter with our needle from the inside of the bottommost hole of the signature.
Then we pull until the knot on our waxed thread is hooked to the inside of our signature.
Once our needle exits from the outside bottom hole of our first signature, we can thread it through the underside -the part facing the ground- of the wooden cover.
We then tighten our waxed thread. Congrats, almost done with the first stitch!
We’ve arrived at the foundation of the Coptic technique: Looping Around.
In order to bind the cover and signature together, all we have to do is gently guide our needle under the existing waxed thread.
Then we pull tightly, having secured the first stitch.
Having secured the cover and bottom hole, we can go back inside where we came from.
Now we can do the same sequence for the middle: We can stick the needle through it to go outside.
Just like the first stitch, we can again thread it through the underside - the part facing the ground - of the wooden cover.
We can guide our needle under the last loop we've made.
Having secured the middle cover and signature holes together, we can go back inside and exit through the top hole.
For the last time, we thread our needle through the underside of the top hole of our wooden cover.
Once we loop around and under the waxed thread and pull it tightly, we’re finished with our first signature! It only gets easier from now on.
We place the second signature on top of the one we just finished. Now we can push our needle in from the top outside hole. NO NEED TO DO A LOOP AROUND FOR THIS HOLE
We exit our needle from the inside of the middle hole.
We repeat the looping movement that we used to bind the cover and first signature, just this time we stick our needle under the waxed thread that binds the cover and first signature.
We enter back inside the middle and go out through the bottom hole of our second signature.
We again repeat the looping movement that we used to bind the cover and first signature, this time we stick our needle under the knot we made then.
We begin by pushing our needle inside the bottom hole of our 3rd signature, and exiting from the middle back outside.
By now our fingers are getting good, and we repeat the same movement. We loop around the knot that binds our 1st and 2nd signatures.
We then enter back with our needle and exit from the top most hole.
We’re at the last hole of our 3rd signature. We have exited from the inside, now we loop around the knot that binds our 1st and 2nd signatures.
We can continue adding more spines with the same steps.
When the final spine has stitched, we take our needle through the first hole of the wooden notebook cover, and make a loop.
This time we're looping around from the latest loop we've made through the wooden cover.
We enter from the same hole back into the top spine. First hole of the notebook is securely bonded by now.
We're going out from the middle hole of the spine.
We loop around from the stitch below.
We loop through the middle hole of the wooden cover.
Since the first hole of the wooden notebook cover has already been bonded, it is easier to make a loop around the remaining holes by opening the wooden cover and thucking the needle under it.
We loop around from the stitch below.
We get back into the same spine from the same hole.
We loop around from the stitch below. At this point we can tighten the thread as we're getting to the completion.
We loop through the 3rd hole of the wooden cover.
We loop around from the stitch below to make sure our last spine is connected firmly.
We get back into the same spine from the same hole. To finalize our notebook, we loop around from the diagonal thread going through the spine and make a knot. Thanks to the waxed thread, only 2 knots on top of each other is enough.
You can cut the excess thread and well done! You've made your very first coptic stitched notebook.
Congratulations, you have a one of a kind, wooden notebook items box with custom swirled covers.
With all the materials and step by step instructions, in less than 30 mins you’ll have the experience making your own hand-stitched Coptic notebooks.
We love making stuff, this also includes making tunes. To celebrate the Wooden Sound System's natural volume boosting capability, we've launched our Spotify account.
Hope you'll enjoy the tunes.