A Peek Into My Studio and a Brief Explanation of the Butterfly Buttonhole

I am rather busy at the moment – therefore the blogging is slowing down a little.

I am very happy about a variety of commissions that I am working on. I mentioned it in a previous post: I was commissioned to make a sketch book and a photo album. Both are almost done. (The sketchbook is still missing a closure, and the photo album still needs to be sewn.) Luckily I am not in much hurry with those. I made some more blank books, too, to keep my Etsy shop alive. And at the beginning of the last week I got contacted by someone else, and now I am discussing with him a commission of a little more than a dozen mini books.

So I still have not found the time to write down in more detail how my buttonhole variant works. But here are the essentials:

I learned to make the buttonhole binding from this online tutorial. When constructing the cover, I additionally punch holes at the head and tail of the spine. Edit: And at this position also additional holes in the signatures are  pre-punched. (Thanks, dwaallicht, for your question.)

For the sewing I thread a needle on both ends of my sufficiently large sewing thread, and start not with the last but with the first signature, and by going out through the inner holes in the signature, through the buttonhole on the spine with both needles. Then  I am working in a butterfly style on both sides of the hole simultaneously, but otherwise in the same way as described in the tutorial for the first half of the binding. Except every time it says there that you should pass the thread over the book’s edge you pass it through the additional hole(s). When I am inside the last signature with both needles, I simply tie them together in a knot. Works perfectly well, and sufficiently easy if you have enough holes that are not spaced too far from each other. (What is too far of course depends on how thick your signatures are.)

This is on my side desk for today: In the front, big and blue you see the finished cover for the photo album, pages inside. – This needs to be sewn. Above are pages and covers for 6 mini books intended to show my Coptic headbands should they ever get finished. – This is far at the end of my to-do-list at the moment.

Next you see a limp leather binding, this is the sketch book, still in need of a closure.  Then there is the cover for another butterfly buttonhole blank binding for my shop – maybe to be finished tomorrow. And furthest to the window  are leather and parchment for the next commission – the first thing I am going to do today is finish a proposal to my customer. Behind them you see a finished box full of 7 finished pamphlets. – I am planning to show them off in more detail in the near future. For now I leave you with another photo, this one of another butterfly buttonhole, and a better view of the essential details on the spine.