Make You Own Sketchbook: Long Stitch Binding Style

1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome to my studio. My name is Ido Agassi. And today in this class, I'll take you step by step through the process of creating a beautiful handmade sketchbook using the long stitch binding technique. This is one of my favorite ways to bind a book. Not only is it fun and satisfying to make, but the finished book opens a full 360 degrees, making it perfect for sketching, journaling, watercolor painting, or everyday writing. My name is Ido Agassi, and I'm a book artist. I combine the crafts of letterpress printing, bookbinding and box making to create my art in the form of a book. I have the pleasure of making books and boxes for 30 years, and I would love to share my knowledge with you. I remember the first time I discovered this binding style, how amazed I was by the elegant simplicity and the way the book could lay completely flat or fall back on itself without any strain. It felt like the perfect mix of form and function. Now I can't wait to share it with you. Whether you're completely new to bookbinding or looking for a creative and relaxing project, this is the place for you. I will walk you through the whole process of making this book from folding the papers and making signatures, preparing your covers, to sewing your book and adding lovely finishing touches like an elastic closure and bands, and even a pocket. You don't need any previous knowledge or special tools, just curiosity and the joy of making something with your hand. At the end of this class, you will have the knowledge and the skill to make many more sketchbooks like the one that you will have, and I'm sure you will make more. So I invite you to join me in this wonderful journey to the world of books. Are you ready? Let's start working. 2. Tools & Materials: Hello, and thank you for joining this class. Before we begin, I would like to go through the tools and materials that we would need. I will put a great board on the table so we will have a nice background. I will start with the cutting mat, which I really recommend you to buy. It would prevent you from ruining your working surface. I use it all the time. We would need a medium sized ruler, a small ruler, triangular ruler, a pencil. A bone folder. You can use a Teflon bone folder or a regular bone folder, a craft knife. I recommend a 30 degree blade, a pin. This is a pin connected to a piece of plastic, a straight needle. This is number 18. Thread, you can use linen thread or also synthetic thread, scissors. A piece of weight. This is brass weight, but you can also use marble or a block of wood. What's important is that it would sit flat on the table and have a 90 degree angle. A small glue brush, it could be straight or rounded, PVA or white glue, whatever works for you. Four materials we would need book cloth 42 on 26, Book binding board 1 millimeter thick, 35 on 25 centimeters. We would need two pieces. Book binding board, 25 on 22 centimeters. Min is 1.2 millimeter thick as the thickness of the leather. So you need this piece to be as the thickness of your piece of leather. Moving on to the piece of leather, we would need 7.5 centimeters on 22. Take a larger piece, and then we will trim it to the size we need. A piece of cloth also 7.5 on 22 centimeters that we are going to glue on the back side of the leather. It could be the color of the leather, but it could be also the color of the outside of your binding. To pieces of end paper, 21 on 14 centimeter. Paper A four size, 32 sheets. This is 100 gram. You can work 90-120, but you can also use thicker paper like for watercolor. We will talk about that in the class of folding paper and making signatures. Paper for the template, 21 on 5 centimeters. In the class resources, there's also a PDFle you can download and print. For making a pocket, we would need paper 38.5 centimeters on 21 and also two pieces of cloth as the color of the outside, 4 centimeters on 12. For the elastic closure, you would need double sided tape. We just need a small piece of three by two, but this is the entire role just for the video. An elastic band 26 centimeter long and about six or seven millimeter wide. For the holes, you would need a flat headed screwdriver, if you want to improvise. But I recommend a chisel 1 centimeter wide. And the last thing we would need is a paper clip. So these are actually all the tools and materials that you would need for this class. I also made a list in our class resources, so you can go there and check you have everything. I also convert it into inches if you prefer to work in inches. I'm eager to start working, and I'll see you in our next lesson. 3. Folding Paper: Welcome back. I want to start this class by folding papers into signatures. What are signatures? Signatures, also called sections are folded sheets of paper, nested inside the other. Because in this sketchbook, I decided to use 90 gram paper, which is quite thin, I'm going to make signatures of 16 pages. That means four folded sheets of paper, nested one inside the other. If you prefer to work with a thicker paper, let's say 200 or 300 gram like this paper. Then I suggest work with signatures of 12 pages, and that means three folded sheets of paper nested one inside the other. One more thing, I'm going to work with A four size paper. If you prefer to work in inches, no problem, work with a letter size paper. And in our class resources, you'll have all the measurements in this class converted into inches. So let me bring a bone folder and we will start working. The first option of folding is taking a sheet of paper, bringing corner to corner, see everything is straight all around. Fold with your hand, and then with the bone folder. I'll show you again. I'll take a sheet of paper, bring corner to corner. See everything is straight, fold first with your hand, and then with a bone folder. What you can also do is take a piece of marble or a block of wood or in this case, brass weights, and that could act as a stopper and I'll show you how it works. I'll put this on the table, bring the paper, the upper side, see that the corners are straight, fold first with your hand, and then with the bone folder. Let me show you again. I'll bring it to the weight, see everything is aligned, first with my hand and then with bone folder. After you have four folded sheets of paper, then you can nest them one inside the other. So this is one, two, three, and four, and I have a signature of 16 pages. What you can also do is take four sheets of paper in one go, bring it to the weight, fold it, see everything is aligned, and then fold them all together. I'll show you again. I'm taking four sheets of paper, bringing them to the weight, bringing the upper side, see everything is aligned, then fold with my hand and then with a bone folder. If you are going to work with thicker paper or with printed paper, then I suggest you do it individually, each one at a time. I want to show you also folding thick paper. I'll bring it also to the weight, fold, and bring it to the stopper, see everything is aligned, fold first with my hand, and then with the bone folder, I'll show you one without the weight. I'll bring corner to corner. Se everything is straight, fold first with my hand, and then with the bone folder. Let me nest this one inside the other. As you can see, it's pointing out if I'll add another paper here, and fold another one corner to corner and nest it. That would give me a signature of 12 pages. And as you can see, the inner one is pointing nearly half a centimeter then the outer one. This is not a problem, but if you want, you can afterwards trim the edge as the outer one. So go ahead and fold all the papers until you have eight signatures, and I will see you in our next list. 4. Preparations For The Cover: Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to prepare the materials for our cover. There are many variations of this binding technique, and I will elaborate on that in our coffee break. I will show you today how to make this binding with a leather spine. I'm going to use leather. This is a leftover leather I have from an old project. You can also reuse material from, I don't know, an old bag or a couch that was thrown away or whatever you want, reuse material because I do recommend that. We just need a little piece of leather. You can also work with cloth or other materials. Working with leather has its very special tools, and that is why I facilitated the process to very simple steps. I'm going to cut the leather to a piece just a bit wider than what I need. I'll bring my ruler a knife, and I'm going to cut around just more than 7.5 centimeters. So if on my table, this is five, seven, let's cut it around nine. Move this aside, and I need 22, and this is 23, and that's enough. What I'm going to do is take a piece of cloth. I'm using black cloth for kind of a grayish black leather, but you can also choose the color of the outside binding to go on the leather or whatever color that you would choose. I'll bring a piece of waste paper to put underneath, and I'm going to take my glue and just glue the wrong side of the leather, the sued side. Just apply on the leather. Because it's a larger piece that we need, I just glue everything and it is not a problem. As I said, I'm going to facilitate the process, and that's something that helps. If there are little marks or something, you can take them out. I'll move the glue, take the waste paper out underneath the table. And now I'm going to take the piece of cloth and just connect it to the leather. Take my bone folder and work with my bone folder on the leather. And now I just want to let it dry for a bit. So I let it dry for 5 minutes the wonders of editing. And now I'm going to cut to the size I need. So first of all, let me cut it on this side. First of all, I will cut the leather until the gap here. I'm going to mark 22. I'll take a needle. This is a needle just connected to a piece of plastic. You can also use a pin, and I will mark 22 and 22 here. Great. Now, let's line it up on the table. On the straight line here. I'll cut this And now I'm going to measure 7.5. And over here also 7.5 put my ruler between the marks, and I'm going to cut. That's it. Very simple. The reason this is 22 is because the papers are 21 and I have extra 1 centimeter for half a centimeter for top and bottom. The reason this is 7.5 is because 2.5 is going to be the spine, 2.5 centimeters on the front cover, and 2.5 on the back cover. And that brings me to the covers. The trick I want to show you for this binding technique is to construct the binding from three layers, an inner layer of 1 millimeter board. Then a middle layer, the thickness of the leather, and then the outer layer. So what I'm going to do is first of all, cut the outside and the inside, so four pieces of board, I'll bring my ruler and the weight. And first of all, I'm going to cut the 22. So I'm going to measure 22 and 22. I'll bring my long ruler. Put it between the dots. Hold the ruler firmly and then cut once, twice, not letting go of the ruler until I finish cutting the piece. Now, let me measure 15 centimeters. So 15 once and 15 twice. Between the dots. Let me cut this also. 15. 15. Between the dots. I'm going to save this for the template. Let me do the second two. Great. Now I'm going to cut a piece of board that is the thickness of the leather. You can use old food packaging or a couple of papers just until you reach the thickness of the leather. What I'm going to do is cut it 12.5. That is because we cut 15, and the leather is going to be 2.5 on the inner layer. So I have left 12.5. I'll bring my needle to mark. 12.5 and 12.5. Ruler between the marks, hold the ruler and going a couple of times one just making the path, and then I'm going again. And again, it's usually three, four times, even five. Just when it's disconnected, then I'm letting go of the ruler. So I have this one, do the other 112.5. 12.5. Great. Moving on to cutting the cloth, look what a wonderful color. What we're going to do is cut it 19 on 26. This is already 26. I want to explain why the measurements because I want 2 centimeters all around. Okay? So if this is 22, I need 26, and if this is 15, I want 19. I'll take my pencil and a ruler and mark 19 and 19 here also. Hold the ruler and cut. So this is one piece. Let's do another 19 here. 19. Now with this leftover, which is 4 centimeters, I want to cut a strip of 2 centimeters. I can line it up on my cutting mat, but I can also take my small ruler and mark two and two. Hold the ruler and cut this Great. So we have everything we need. We have two strips for the inner layer. We have the cloth for the outside. We have four layers of board for the inner and outer layers. We have two boards as the thickness of our leather. Let me check again. Yeah, it's the same thickness. So that's it for these preparations, cut everything, and in our next lesson, we are going to bind everything together. I'll see you there. 5. Making The Cover: Come back. After all the materials are ready, it's time to bind them together, and I will start by taking the inner layer and marking a line with my pencil 1 centimeter from the edge. Great. Now I want to glue a strip of cloth as the color of the outside. You remember we cut a strip. Now I want to show you a trick, how to glue it with a straight line. So I'm going to take two pieces of waste paper, one underneath, and one on it until the line we just marked, I'll take my glue brush, the small one, and I'm going to glue from the paper towards the outside, so no glue will go underneath. I'm going to glue all the piece. I'll take out the waste paper from up and down. And now I'm going to take my strip, and I'm going to bring it to the line. It doesn't matter. I need just up until here, so it doesn't matter if it's equal or not. Take my bone folder and connect. Now, I'll take my craft knife, and I'm going to cut up until the end here also. I'll take another piece of waste paper, and now I'm going to glue the cloth, the edge here. Take the wastepaper out. Don't forget. And then I'm going to fold it up until the board. Let me take the bone folder and connect it. If it's not straight like here, don't worry, it's going to be covered. If it's pointing out, you can trim it. Let's do the other one. I'll measure 1 centimeter. Waste paper underneath, one on top. Until the line glue from the paper toward the outside. Just an even amount of glue. Take the wastepaper out. Bring another strip, put it until the line. Flip it over. If you want, you can cut it like this, bring the ruler and then finish the cut. I'm not sure it is necessary. Can just cut it all the way. Waste paper underneath. Glue the rest of the cloth. Take it out. Fold it, make sure there's no gap, and fold it on the other side. Take the bone folder, and that's it. If it's not straight, again, you can trim the edges. It is going to be covered. So that's it, two sides. I think it's very simple, right? Okay, next stage, what I'm going to do is mark 2.5 centimeters from the edge. I'll take my long and my short ruler and see I have 2.5 centimeters both sides. And I'm going to mark a line. Let me do it to the other side. 2.5. Great. Now I'm going to take wastepaper underneath and on top. And I'm going to glue this piece with the cloth, okay? Now, don't worry. If it's not straight enough, don't worry because afterwards, we are going to cover it from the outside. But we are always aiming for perfection and we want ourselves for other project to be precise. But don't worry if it's not exactly the same line. I'm going to bring my leather, and I'm going to bring the leather is up here and the cloth down here, and I'm going to bring it until the line. What I do want you to make sure that the leather is straight with the board, you can play with it a bit and make sure it's from top to bottom. I'll take my bone folder and work with the bone folder. Great. Now I'm going to flip it over. Okay? So now I have the nice edge of the outside and the cloth of the leather. Now I want to make a gap of 2.5 centimeters. There's a couple of ways you can do it. First of all, you can take a weight that is 2.5 centimeters. But if you don't have a weight, you can make a piece of board, a spacer, which is 2.5 centimeters, the same thickness as this. So you can make yourself a spacer, and if not, you can take a ruler and just mark 2.5 centimeters with a pencil. What's important is to make sure you have a straight line on the top when you are gluing it. So let me use a spacer because I'm not sure you have a weight that size. So I'm going to put a spacer, and I'll put the weight here. I usually put it up here, but I don't want to interfere with the footage, so I'll put it over here. So what I'm going to do now is glue the strip here and bring it to the spacer and make sure I have a straight line. I'll bring waste paper underneath. And on it until the line here. Glue it on the cloth. Don't worry. Take the wastepaper out holding and bringing to the marks or to the spacer. Make sure it's straight up and down. Let's take the spacer out and our first stage is ready. We have the inner layer and the outer layer. Now the next stage, do you remember we cut 12.5? This is the 12.5, and we are going to glue it up until the leather, just to make the same thickness as the leather. So what I'm going to do, I'll take my big brush, glue from the middle outside, all around. I'll bring my weight as a stopper here, bring it to the leather. But it's most important for me to see it straight over here, all around here. Bone folder, flip it over. Se it's connected nicely. Flip it back. Now I'll glue the other side. Again, I want a straight line here and a straight line here. Let me put now over here and see that it comes up until the edge. I can work with it a bit. If there's a little gap here, don't worry. Again, it's going to be covered up until the end. Okay, making sure everything is straight. Flip it over, connect it. Now we have reached the stage where you can work on the outside layer and finish the cover. But what you can also do, and that's what I want to teach you here is to stop here after making the two layers, then making the holes and sewing the whole book. And that way, you won't damage the fabric while pulling and working. And just after finish the sewing, then we are going to cover the outside. I also want to show you a trick for how to make a closure, and we are going to do that later on in the class. So let's stop here, and I will see you in our next lesson. 6. Making The Templates: Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to make templates, two of them, one for the spine and one for the inner signatures. In our class resources, I will add PDF file with these templates so you can go and download there, but I want to show you the method so you can implement that in different formats and sizes. We are going to make this binding with eight signatures, and we are going to sew each two signatures in the same line of holes. Also, we are going to make six stations. The top and bottom ones are going to be for a chain stitch, and the rest, the four are going to be for the long stitch. So let's start by cutting the template for the outside for the spine. I will bring the weight in my ruler, and I will mark 2.5 centimeter and 2.5 centimeter here. I'll bring my knife and ruler between the dots and cut. We want to make sure that the template goes inside the gap of the binding. Now, we need to be precise. What I'm going to do is take my pencil and a small ruler, and I'm going to mark a line half a centimeter from the edge. Let's do it on the other side. Exactly half a centimeter. Now, from this line, I will make another line of half a centimeter. And on the other side, the same. So actually, if this is 2.5 centimeter all around, I just make four lines, half a centimeter apart. Okay? Now, I'm going to measure from one side, from one edge. Doesn't matter if the top or bottom, I'm going to mark 1.5 centimeter. Let's do it on the other side. 1.5 centimeters. Make sure it's correct. Make a line. Now I'm going to jump 1.5 centimeter and make another line. And go 6 centimeters and make a line. Let's do the same exactly the same on the other side. So 1.5. And between them, we are supposed to have 4 centimeters. Great. Now, pay attention. I'm making a mark on the top corner where the first station and the first line meet over here also. And between those, I'm going to make three marks. So one in the center, and one just underneath the second line and one just above the third line. Let's do it to the other side. Center just a bit above and just a bit below. This is going to be the chain stitch. So if it's not precisely there, the thread itself will hide it. But we want five holes on the top and five holes on the bottom. The rest is just when the two lines cross. One here, one here, one here, and just of them. Again, you will have a PDF file. Don't worry. But if you want to make a larger book, you can make this eight and not six. You can make this wider, depends on you and your design. Let's move on to making the template for the signature. Here, I'm going to fold it in half. I'll take my bone folder. If this was 22 as the outer binding, this is going to be 21 as the signatures. Okay? Don't forget. Now, because we added half a centimeter to the binding, it's 22, and this is 21, we made this 1.5 centimeter, and that is why here we are going to mark 1 centimeter. So 1 centimeter the bottom side and 1 centimeter on the top side. Now, it's the same as on the outside. Okay? We are going to do 1.5, and then 61.5 and then six. I'm going to fold it in words so I can see where I want to make the holes. I'll bring a paper clip to connect, and then it would hold the signature while making the holes. So that's it. We have the two templates for the outside and for the inside. In the next lesson, we're going to make some holes, prepare yourself, and I'll see you in my next lesson. 7. Piercing Holes: Welcome back. Are you ready to pierce some holes? Let me bring the cover, and I'm going to locate the template inside between the two inner layers. Now, let me bring two book binding boards just to put underneath the cover. So when I'm making the holes, I won't damage the working surface. Now, you can attach with a piece of masking tape so the template won't move. You can also hold it with your hand. But what's important is to take your time while making the holes because you need to be very precise in this stage. I'll take my o, and I'm going to start on the top side, just the tip of the all inside, lifting my hand. I want it parallel to the ole and just start piercing inside. Moving on to the second one. The center one. And these are the five holes. Now I want to show you a trick for it not to move. If you have two holes or maybe you have a pin, you can use something like this, or just this kind of pin to put inside. And then while you are working, nothing would move. Okay? So I have the first line of holes. I leave this pin here and I'm going on with the holes. Each one I'm twisting a twisting movement to go inside. Second line of stations is ready. Let's move on. When I'm working with the oil, I'm trying for the point of the oil to go around three, 4 millimeters inside. That's enough for the needle to go through and two threads in each station. And the last line here. And the last one. Let's take it out. So we have all the six rows of stations. Et me take out and see, it's a nice result. Let's move on to making the holes inside the signatures. I'll bring a piece of board to make the holes in the signatures because, again, I don't want to damage my working surface, so I'll take our template, put it inside the signature. Make sure it is straight. If I'm going to put the template exactly at the edge in every signature, then the holes will be precise all along all the signatures. Okay. So even if your template is a bit shorter or longer than the inside paper, the signature, if you'll keep a straight line here on the edge, everything would be precise in the same location. I'll take my all and start at the first station, first hole. I'm closing the signature and then pulling towards me because I want it exactly in the fold. I'll go to the second station. Each time I'm locating, closing 45 degrees, and then inserting it into the book mining board. And that way, I have the hole exactly in the fold. After I finish all the holes, I'm taking out the template with the paper clip. I'll put it aside and start the next one. Making sure it's in the center, connecting the template, banging it a bit so everything would go inside properly, making sure everything is straight here. And again, first hole, going inside, I'm working this way because I want to see the tip of the all going out exactly in the place. If I work upside down like this, then I'll see where to locate it, and I need to peek outside towards you to see that it went okay. So that is why I prefer the outside to go towards me. I love this part. You find the rhythm and just keep on making holes. Again, making sure it is straight here. And the last one Great. So we have all the holes for all the signatures. Yeah, it looks straight. I think this is a great place to stop and have a coffee break. I want to share with you some of my knowledge about the long stitch binding and show you some variations of this binding technique. So make yourself a cup of coffee or tea, and I'll see you in our coffee break. 8. Coffee Break: Welcome to our coffee break. I hope you enjoying the class so far. I wanted to share with you some variations of the long stitch binding technique that I made through the years in sketchbooks. I will start by showing you a sketchbook I made for my son. This sketchbook has just six signatures. And because the paper is very thick, that is why I'm using only eight pages in every signature. And also, we have only six signatures inside the book. So this is a nice option for sketchbook. Again, it opens 360 degrees, and it is great for watercolor. The first sketchbook I made for shaked for my son is this one. I think it's from 2012. He was 15-years-old. Also, we made a pocket here, and we actually paired the leather and folded it inside. And there's no boards here, so that is why it's the leather itself. It is a soft cover, and we made a string of leather to close it. So this is another nice option for a sketchbook. These two sketchbooks are challenges from October. October is a challenge to draw every day. Every day you have a word, and you just sketch or draw the word. So this is fish and radio. And he made a whole story. Here he used bristol paper. So each signature is actually eight pages. So because we have 31 days and we have the title page, so 32 pages inside the October. This is from 2019, he used thinner paper, but still we have here eight pages in each signature. So on the spine, we have the eight signatures son and we didn't make a pocket here, but this is synthetic thread on the spine. I'll show you this is my group. We are sitting around the campfire, and I made a sketchbook with matches. So this is from 2013. Things that we said and did around the campfire. Also leather bound, flexible as all the others. If you don't want to work with leather, it is also optional. This is with silk cloth. So what I did is the outside is completely bound with silk and the inside, I'm lining it with the same cloth. We have a pocket here and the same thing we are going to do in our class here. Okay, flexible. But when you are working with cloth, you need to be a bit more delicate with the pulling because it's less durable than leather. Okay? But this is a great option. I want to show you my talented friend On Hitz Roni. He's amazing and he woodcver he's carving spoons. So each year, I'm giving him as a present, a sketchbook, and he's so amazing with his designs. He's taking it with him everywhere. Look how he added watercolor to the mushrooms here. I'll show you another one. This is I remember he was preparing for the spoonfest and he made a list of what he's going to take. Where is it? This is from Halloween. Here it is. Phone and charger and a sketchbook and everything you need pounds. Truly amazing. And when he went to the Tractor Museum, look how amazing the tractor sketchbook. John Deer 47. As you can see, all the sketchbook I'm showing you here haven't got anything. These are blank papers. And that is because I feel that the paper blank, you can sketch or write wherever you want inside the sketchbook. But what I did is I made for you, and it is in the class resources, a dotted PDF that you can print on both sides and also a PDF with lines. What you do is you put it inside a printer, print one side, and then flip over the paper and print the other side. It's a bit tricky to line it up, there are printers that are printing both sides. For me, you just need to flip it over. If you want to make some of the signatures with dotted or with lines or all of them, so you have the option. But what I feel you should do I made for you also a lined paper, and that can fit inside your pocket at the end of the sketchbook. And then you can just put it wherever you want, and you have the lines, and then you can take it out and put it inside the pocket again. And then if you want to sketch if you want to stick something, it doesn't interfere with the sketchbook. And I made it. This is 0.9 gap between the lines. I made some more. So if you have smaller handwriting, so as you can see, there's so many variations of this binding technique, and you can make whatever you want. And I would love to see what you have made in this class. So please share it with us in the class project. I'll finish my coffee, and we'll go on to the next lesson. I'll see you there. 9. Preparing The Thread: Come back. Let's start by preparing a thread. There are two options that you can work with. This is a synthetic thread. It is very slippery. That is why when you are going to sew with it, it would be much easier that it won't tangle up. But the pulling of the thread is much more difficult because it's slippery. And if you are working with a synthetic thread, make sure that it's strong enough, okay? And don't forget to fuse the edge with a lighter. Like this. And close it. Otherwise, it would open and it would cause problems. I'm going to work with natural thread, okay? This is linen thread, and it is 40 ply. I have a video on YouTube with all the explanations about thread and what to choose and how to work with it. Let me bring one signature, and I'm going to take nine times the length of my signatures. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine. I'll cut it. Now, this is a natural thread that is not waxed. If you want to wax it, what you can do is take a bar of be wax, okay? It can also be a candle or something. And what you do you take the edge, hold your thumb on the thread, and just pull the thread. You do it a couple of times. And that gives you the right amount of wax, and then you can work with it. Usually, I work with waxed, but this is a possibility also. Now I'm going to show you a trick how to thread the needle. I'll bring my needle. Connect it to the thread. Now, around 3 centimeters from the edge, I'm going to hold the thread and insert the needle inside the middle of the thread. I'm going to hold it, pull back, and it's connected. I can work with it. There's no knot to interfere with my work. Let me put it here on the edge of the table, and in our next lesson, we're going to start sewing the book. I'll see you there. 10. Let The Sewing Begin: Welcome back. Let the sewing begin. I'll bring the cover, and I'll bring the first signature. What I'm going to do is in this lesson, I'm going to show you the three first signatures because it's a bit different. And then in the next lesson, we're going to sew the whole book. So I'm going to start with the needle in the second station from the inside out. Okay? The second station. I'll pull the thread and leave around tail of 10 centimeters. Okay? We can pull it afterwards. Now I'm going to go inside the second station on the cover, okay? So not the first, the second station from the inside out. I'm pulling the thread let me bring the cover and the signature towards one another. Now I'm going to flip over and look for the third section on the first line. It's here. I'm not going inside the signature, inside the cover, it would be much easier. And I'm pulling the thread. Let me flip it over back. And now I'm going inside the signature. Pulling all the way, making sure that the thread is not twisting. At the beginning, we have a long thread, so we don't need knots here. Now I'm going to the fourth station, slowly pulling the thread up until the end. And now I'm going inside the station, the same station, but just on the spine. Look how I'm holding the thread so it won't get twisted and just managing it inside if you feel that the thread is twisting, I like to throw it away and then twist it back into place. Okay? You just throw it back and then make sure it's not twisting. Great. Let me flip over the binding like this so you can see. Now I'm going inside the station here and pulling the thread. Always the beginning is moving a bit, and don't be alarmed. You just need patience. Let's go inside the signature. If like now, I can't find the inside, I'm going from the inside out to make sure I find the hole and then going back inside the hole. I'm in. I'll pull the thread. Long thread. I'll pull it a bit. And now I'm going inside the last station, pulling back slowly, can hold a thread and just manage it inside. You see how it hold it and pull it inside. And now I'm going inside The station in the spine. This is our last station. Okay? We are here. The last station. Pull the thread. Now I'm going back inside the same station, making sure I didn't go inside the thread itself, and I'm pulling until I have a loop. Okay, up until now, I went inside the same station, not inside the signature, just inside the spine again, and I have a loop. Now I'll bring the paper clip and just connect it inside the loop and then I can pull and it won't get loose. Okay? I'll flip the binding over. We are here, not inside the signature, and now I'm going to take the second signature, put on it, and go inside the signature. Pull the thread up until the end. Now I'm going inside the next station from the inside out. And I'm going to go outside to the spine inside the same hole we had before. So I'll find a hole I feel that I'm outside. I'm going to flip over the binding just to make sure I didn't accidentally go inside the thread. Okay? We need each of the threads to be individual and not go inside the other, and it is connected inside the same hole. Now I'm going inside the same hole of the first signature. I'm making sure I didn't go inside the thread. I'm pulling Pull it tight. You can see you can manage the thread if it's not straight. I'll flip over the binding and go inside the signature. Great. You're doing great. Let's go on. Next station in the signature from the inside out. And now inside the same hole of the first signature, I'm inserting the needle, flipping over the binding, making sure I didn't go inside the previous thread. If I did, I can go back and go out again, making sure it's not inside the thread. Okay? This is, I think the most important thing in this sewing pattern. So I'm going back inside the spine beside the thread of the first station. You can manage it a bit, see it's okay, pull it, flip over the binding. And now I'm going to go inside the station. It's the second station. Moving on to the first station in the second signature. Now, pay attention. I'm going out to the spine, not in the first hole, but in the second hole, not in the first row, in the second row. Okay? Remember, we made five holes here, not four, five, so just one over the first line. Then I'm going out, pulling the thread, slowly making sure everything is okay. I'll flip over so you can see. Okay. So I came out in the second one, not the first one. Let me pull the beginning so it would look good managing the threads. And now I'm going to go inside the first station because I want to go inside the first signature. So I went inside the first station, and now I'll find the first station of the first signature. Remember, we started at the second. Now we are going inside the first. And what we want to do is a double knot. But before we are going to tie it up, we want to make some pulling. So let's pull both of them towards the beginning, one and two. And now let's pull the beginning of the thread, and let's pull the new thread here. When you feel that everything is tight enough and looks good. Okay? This is the beginning, and this is the new one. When everything is tight, then I will flip it over, open the signatures and make a double knot. One and two. I live a long edge here, and now I'm going inside the first station, and I'm going out inside the spine in the first section. And this is going to form our first chain. Now I'm going inside the second station again, but not inside the signature, but just over and outside. And we didn't go inside because now I'm going to take the third one and go inside the signature. Pull the thread. Now go in the second station, pull the thread. And now we are going to work on the second line. So I'm going inside the spine, second station of the second line, pulling it back. Can see it here. And now I'm going inside the spine, second line, third station, pulling it back. Flipping over and going inside the signature. From now, it becomes much more easy. Don't worry. You're doing fine. Moving on to the next station, pulling the thread, let me hold it so it won't get twisted. And I'm going outside to the spine. I'll put the thread. Starting to form. Going inside the next station on the spine here. Flip it over. Go inside the signature. At station. Pulling back, thread. And outside the second hole Great. I'll pull it. Okay. Don't be afraid to pull it. It's very important because it attaches the signature to the spine. You can also play with the beginning if you see that the thread is not like you want it to be because this is already with a knot. Now, what I'm going to do is lift the beginning and go with a needle inside the loop. After you make sure you're inside the loop, let me take out the paper clip, and I'm pulling the thread inside the loop. Inside the same hole, but not inside the signature, okay? I'll flip it over so you can see. Now the last stage, don't forget I'm going in the next hole here on the spine. Pulling the thread up until the end. Now, I'm taking my needle and going inside the first chain stitch here from the outside, inside, and inside the same hole. Pulling until the end. And now what I have to do is bring the fourth one, go inside, and keep on sewing. So this is the more complex part. Starting at the beginning. Everything is moving, but you are doing fine. If you are not sure, just rewatch this lesson until you reach this part. And in the next lesson, we're just going to sew with the flow. So I'll see you there. 11. Sew With The Flow: Welcome back. We are in our fourth signature, and we are going to sew with flow. So I'm going to go inside the last station. Pull my thread. Go outside in the next station, and then I'm going to go inside the same hole from the previous the third signature. I'm going to flip over the binding to make sure I didn't go inside the thread. I'm clear here. It's okay. And I'm pulling my thread up until the end. Great. Let me go inside the next hole on the spine, making sure, again, not to go inside a thread. It looks okay. I'll flip over the binding. Pull the thread and go inside the signature. Pull the thread going in the next station. And looking for the same hole in the spine as the third signature, I'll flip it over, see that it's okay and I'm not inside the thread. Pull it. And I'm going inside the next station. Pull it and go inside the signature. To the first station outside in the next hole. Pull the thread up until the end, flipping over the binding. Now I'm pulling, pulling tight. Don't be afraid. Pull tight. Okay? Look how I'm managing the thread. If they are not at the same location, I can play with it. So it would look straight this one and this one. And I'm pulling, pulling very hard. And now I'm going inside the loop, the chain before, pulling my thread locking the thread and then going inside the same hole, but not inside the signature. Pulling. And I'm going to the fifth signature. Inside. Pull the thread outside. Outside the spine in a new row. I'm starting the third row. Flipping over the binding, going inside the spine in the third row. Flip over the binding and inside the signature. Next station. On the spine. Pull it, flip over. Next hole. Flick over. Inside the signature. And in the last hole and going out in the next hole. Pulling, flipping over, pulling tight towards the direction of sewing. Don't be afraid to pull it. And then I'm going from the outside and inside the loop, inside the chain, pulling and forming another chain and then going back inside. Look how nicely it's forming. I'll flip over binding and take the next signature. This is number six. Go inside. Next station. Now we are going again, inside the same holes as we made. So I'm going inside the same hole, again, flipping over, making sure I didn't go inside the thread. Looks okay. Pulling and going inside the spine again. Next station. And inside the signature. And back inside the same hole. We see that it's okay. Yeah, it looks okay. As the thread becomes shorter, it's much easier to work. Next station, flip over and inside the signature. First station. Going outside the next hole. So I'm pulling towards the direction of sewing. And then going inside the loop from the inside towards the outside. It doesn't really matter if you go from the inside to the outside or vice versa, but just do it the same in the whole process of sewing. Okay? So if you mixed it, just keep on doing the same as you did before. And I'm going inside the same hole, foaming the chain, flipping it over, and sewing with the flow. Let's go on seven. You're doing fine. I'm going in the next station. Going inside the fourth line, the last line of holes, pulling, flip over the binding, go inside the whole pull the thread, flip over, and go inside the signature. Next one. Inside the hole, flip over, go inside the next mark. Inside the signature. This is not inside the signature. Did you see what happened? I'll open it. Make sure that the hole is here. And do it again. Now it's okay. Going on to the next one and going out in the spine flip over. Pull the thread tightly. You see here it's not tight. I'll tight this one. Look up. That's why we are pulling. And I'm going this way like this inside the same hole, and I finish this side. No more holes here. Pull it up until the end. Now I'm in the last signature going inside and pulling and outside and inside the same hole as number seven. Let me see if I'm right. It looks okay. Back inside, flip over. Inside the signature. Next station. Find a hole on the spine. Think I'm here. Let me see. Yeah. Pull it. Next station. Side the signature. And we are at the last station or the first station going outside. Flip over pulling. There's a twisting here of the thread, so I'm making it straight again and over here also, making sure it's like I want it to be pulling tightly, going inside the loop, forming another chain. And now because this is the end of the book, I'm opening the signature here and I'm going inside the same hole and inside the signature. I'll flip it over so you can see I'm inside the signature. Now what I'm going to do is take my needle, go inside the thread here. Okay, the sewing that we did, make a loop and go with a thread inside the loop and lock the knot. Let me do it again. I'm going inside a thread here, making a loop, and then going inside the loop. Pulling it and closing it. Before I cut, look what I'm doing. This is a nice trick. We don't want to see the edge just inside the fold of the signature. So what I'm doing, I'm taking my needle, and in the second station, I'm going before the last signature, and I'm just taking out the needle up until here, pulling the thread, and I'm cutting it here. Then when you open and flip the pages, you don't see the edge here. It is hiding on the next one. You can just hide it inside a fold. Okay? So let me do that also to the beginning. Here we are at the beginning. I'll thread the needle. And now I'm going to take two pages before and going inside the hole here. Just so the beginning we hide cutting and inserting it inside the fold. Great. So we hide everything and we finished our sewing. Look how beautiful it turned out to be. In our next lesson, we are going to start covering the outside. I think it was a good decision to do it after the sewing because of all the pulling and twisting and flipping around. I'll see you in our next lesson. 12. Covering The Outside: Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to start covering the outside of our beautiful binding. Let me bring the book. The first stage I want you to do is make sure that the boards are in a straight line and align, and if not, you can send them a bit, okay? This is just a piece of wood connected to sandpaper. You can send the edges, or even if you have a problem, you can trim it a bit. Everything is straight here, but you just take your knife. Maybe you take a ruler also, see that it's straight, and just trim the edges of the board if something is pointing out. But don't forget that we are covering. Let me bring the board. We are covering up until the end of the inner side, okay? So they are both going to be covered. So don't worry if something is a bit pointing out. So let me send it a bit. Great. I'm going to bring my cloth. I will locate the cloth on the table, bring my cover, okay? After I made sure that it is exactly the same as the inside, okay? And I'm going to locate it here. 2 centimeters all around. I'm going to take my two centimeter weight. But what you can also do is take a two centimeter ruler. You can also mark yourself a two centimeter line like this or bring a pencil and just mark a line over here, and mark a line of 2 centimeters over here. But I will use my weights, so I'm going to put one weight here and one weight here, and then I can glue the board and bring it between the weights. So I'll take my brush and I'm going to glue it from the inside out. Flip it over and bring it to the weights. Take out the weights. Flip it over. I'll take my bone folder. Now, because I want everything to be 2 centimeters, I'll take my ruler. I cut it just a bit more than 26 because I wanted to show you that if it's not exactly, you can trim off. So it would be two centimeter all around exactly. Yeah, that's good. Now, I'll move this aside. Now what I'm going to do is glue one side completely. So I'm folding it first. I'll take a piece of waste paper, put underneath, hold it so it won't move. And now I'm going to glue the entire piece of cloth, the two centimeter. Take the waste paper out, and I'm going to fold it inside. And when I'm reaching the edges, I'll take my bone folder and go and take it down on both sides. Okay? This spot is going to be next to the spine and going to be folded inside. Now I'm going to take my triangular ruler, and I want to make a 45 degree angle. So the base of my triangle is going to be straight with the inside, and I'm going to go outside until the line of the marks, which is half a centimeter. But I want to show you if your ruler hasn't got these marks, what I'm going to do is take my ruler, bring corner to corner. And mark half a centimeter here, and from corner to corner, mark half a centimeter here. Now when I bring the ruler, the straight line base, moving until my pencil mark, and then I'm going to mark with a pencil, 45 degrees. It's exactly on the mark in my numbers on the ruler. I'll do it to the other side. The base is straight, so this is 45 degrees. I'll bring it to my mark and mark with a pencil. Now I'll take my ruler and just cut according to my marks one and two. That's it for this stage. Now I'm going to do the next side exactly the same. Great. After finishing the other side, now it's time to connect it to the cover, and this is how you do it. I'll take a waste paper, put underneath the outside cover, and I'm going to glue only the cloth. I'm going to glue it from the inside out because if I'll go the other way, I can have stains on the outside. So I'm going to glue it like this. Up until the end. I'll take the wastepaper out. Now I'll bring two stoppers, two weights. Okay? You can also use a piece of wood or something that would stop the cover. Now I'm going to take my cover, and I'm going to glue only the outside up until the leather. Like so. Just up until the leather, if it's going on, no worries because it's going to be covered nearly until the end. But because we glued the cloth, we don't need it more than that. Now I'm going to hold the cover and bring it to my stoppers. You have still time to play with it. Make sure it's straight. It looks all okay. I can work with the bone folder a bit. I'll move the weights aside, flip over the binding. Yeah, it looks great. Glued properly. I'm going to flip over the binding, and now I'm going to fold short side, short side, and long side. So I'll take a piece of waste paper, put underneath, take my small brush. And glue the cloth from the corner until the edge here, again, from the inside, outside. So no glue will go underneath my cloth. It's lifting here, so I'll put some underneath and glue it properly. I'll take the waste paper out. And now with my fingernail, I'm going to lift it. I want to make sure there's no gaps here and fold it inwards. I can manage the cloth a bit to go exactly to the inner layer that we made earlier and make sure it looks okay. Now I'm going to work the corner. I'm going to take my bone folder and push the corner inside like this. I'm pushing the material inside. So when I'm going to fold it, it won't point out, and that's look good. I'll flip it over. Let's do the other side. Wastepaper underneath. I'll take my brush. Glue up until the end. Take the wastepaper out, lift it with my fingernails, can also use your bone folder. See it's connected nicely and then folded. Inside. I'm starting when I want the straight line of the inner layer and the cloth connecting to it, and then going on. And again, the corner, I'm taking my bone folder and just pushing the material inside. And then one side touches the board, and the other is going on the cloth itself. And all I have left to do is do the forage side or put a piece of wastepaper Hold it, glue up until the end. Take my wastepaper out. Make sure it touches the board nicely and fold it inside. Now I'm lifting the cover and making sure that the corners looks okay. Great. Let's do the next side. Glue only the cloth. I'll take the wastepaper out. I'll bring two stoppers over here. And now I'm going to glue just the cover. Again, from the inside out, we don't want glue on the side. Up until the leather, Make sure it's an even amount. If you have any bumps here, can take them off. And now I'm holding a cover, bringing it to my stoppers, making sure it looks okay. I see on the side. Can also with your eye see everything is okay. I'll flip it over. I'll flip over the binding. And again, I'm going to take my ruler, corner to corner, mark half a centimeter, and corner to corner. Half a centimeter. I'll bring my triangular ruler. Hold the base that is straight and mark 45 and on this side, bring it to the mark and 45. I'll bring my knife and cut this one and cut this one waste paper underneath. Small glue brush from the inside out up until the end. Take out waste paper with my fingernail, with the bone folder. Make sure it's connected to the edge here, then fold it. First of all, I'm making sure it's straight with inner layer here and then going on the complete turnings. And now with the bone folder, moving it inside, Next tight. Waste paper? Take it out. Don't forget. Make sure it's connected nicely at the edge here, and then make sure it's straight with the inner layer, and then the rest, work with the bone folder. Work on the edge, push it inside. And all we have left to do is the forward side. I'll bring another piece of wastepaper and glue this one. Take it out, lift it slowly till the edge, you can lift it like this if you want. And I'll work with the bone folder on the corners, make them nice. And we have the outside cover ready. Look how beautiful it's turning out to be. You can put a bit of weight on it, like a big book or something, but it's supposed to glue properly. In our next lesson, I want to give you a bonus class how to make an elastic band closer to your sketchbook, so I'll see you in the next lesson. 13. Bonus Class - Elastic Closure: Welcome back. This is a bonus class on how to connect elastic band to your bindings. This is not mandatory to finish this class. So if you don't want to add these elastic bands, you can just skip to the next lesson. Many sketchbooks has an elastic band to help close the book, especially if you want to add things to it. We are going to connect the elastic band on the back cover, and we are going to connect it 2 centimeters from the edge. What I did is I made a PDF file with the location. It is waiting for you in our class resources, and you just locate it at the corner, and then you take the chisel and make the whole. What I'm going to do is show you one side with a chisel and the other side, I will show you how to mark with a needle, then cut with a craft knife, and then make it wider with a flat headed screwdriver if you don't have a chisel. Another thing, if you find the elastic band just 1 centimeter and not 6 millimeters, what you can do is make just a wider hole, but start from the two centimeter mark and just make it wider and then it would be much easier for you to insert the elastic band. First of all, we need to decide which side is better for the back. Usually, I decide that if I have any stains or something that I'm not content with, that would be the back cover. I'm going to put two bookbinding boards underneath to make sure I don't damage my working surface. I'll bring the template and locate it exactly in the place. I'll take my chisel, hold my thumb on the upper side, put it exactly in its place, and then I'm going to press down just tilting it and feeling it is going through all the layers. When I'm lifting it, I can feel if it's gone inside. I feel I need a little bit more of course, I'm making the hole on the good side, okay? Because we are pushing down material. So if we'll do it from the inside out, it won't look nice, as we're doing it right now. I can feel it's inside the board. I'll take it out. Nice. It looks okay. I'll move on to the next side. Now, instead of the chisel, I'm going to take and I'm going to mark two points with my needle. And then I can lift it. Another option is just take my knife and make a line once, twice, and then lift the template and repeat the process several times. Just to go inside, can do it from the other side also until I feel I'm through all the layers, all the three layers. I can just lift it and insert the blade inside. I feel I'm there. Then you can take a flat headed screwdriver and just push it inside and move the material. Then slowly in a twisting movement, insert it inside. As you can see, it's gone inside enough. Again, a chisel is better to work with, but this is a way to improvise. Okay? I'll move the boards aside, and now I'm going to flip over the binding, and I have my two holes. I'm going to take a small ruler and a knife and I'm going to cut around 2 centimeters from the exit point, a straight line of 2 centimeters. I'll go twice. I want to go inside the first layer of binding. Remember the inner layer. I'll do another line of 2 centimeters at the other side. And now between these lines, I'm going to connect with another line. What I want to do is peel off one layer of material that would be the same as the thickness of our elastic band because I don't want to see a bump on the inside. So after cutting this, I'll take my chisel and I'm going to peel off the layer outside. You just go inside and slowly, look, I'm twisting my hand like this to peel off the material. This is very satisfying to do. I see that the whole layer is out, and I'm ready to go to the other side. Again, two centimeter from the exit point. I'll make one line, can feel that it's going inside one layer. I'll do the other side. Because everything is going to be covered, it doesn't matter if it's not straight enough. It has to be enough for the elastic band just to be inside. I'll take my chisel and I'm going to go and take out the material. Great. Now I'll take my elastic band, and I want it larger than the cover. Let's say two centimeter on top and bottom, and that means we need around 26 centimeters. I'll take my scissors and just cut it. I'll slip over the binding. You can take now a needle or the chisel itself, and I'm going to push the elastic band inside. You can also take your chisel and just push it inside. I feel that it's inside. And now I'm going to connect it. You see that it fits inside nicely. Now, what you can do, you can use white glue, but you can also use a double sided tape. I'll just cut a strip. And I'm going to connect it inside. Peel it off. And then connect the elastic band. I can use a bone folder to push it in. You can also use hot glue if you want, but this is enough, I think. Now I want to see how much I need. So I'm going to hold it and just push it a bit and see, the 26 is enough. I'm going to open and insert the other side. I'll take my needle Insert inside flip over the binding. Cut another piece, the width of the hole I made. I'll connect it inside peel it off and connect. Let's make sure that it is the size I want. Yes. The 26 centimeters is exactly enough. It holds a book, but it's not too tight, so it would allow closure and to add things. It's strong enough. Let me open it and see again. It holds nicely. In the next lesson, we are going to make a pocket for the back, and for the front, we are going to make and paper, Cls in the next lesson. 14. Pocket & endpaper: Hi, welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to make a pocket for the end of a sketchbook and end paper for the beginning. I will bring the paper. It is already cut to size. 21 is the length, okay? Like the paper inside the sketchbook, and the width is 38.5. I'm using black paper, thicker paper. I do recommend you to use thicker paper around 200 and 250 grams because we are going to glue it and I don't want it to warp and move like a thin paper. Okay? I'll bring my weight and I'm going to mark 14 centimeter from the edge. I'll bring my ruler and my pen and mark 14 here and 14 here. I'll put my ruler between the marks. I can line it up here also. And I'm going to make a crease. I'm taking my bone folder and moving inside the paper and then lifting it and folding it to the ruler. I think I have a nice fold now. Let me see. I see it's aligned, and I'm going to fold it. Now I'm going to measure 12.5. So I'll take my ruler and I'll measure 12.5 once and 12.5 twice. And I'm going to put the ruler between the marks crease it, and then fold it. And that is the reason why I cut the paper 238.5. This is 14. This is 12.5, and this is the rest, which is 12. I want half a centimeter gap here for the air to come out when closing the pocket. Now, I'll move this aside. And I'm going to take a piece of leftover material from our cloth. You can also use the color that you use for lining up the inside of the leather. Depends on you. It's a design choice for the pocket. And I'm going to cut it four centimeter wide. So I'll take my ruler and measure four both sides. You can also take your pencil and mark 4 centimeters And then cut. Okay, I like to line it up on my cutting mat until four. Hold the ruler and then cut. So we need two of those. Now what we are going to do is fold it in half, good side to good side. Okay? Like this, bring it until the edge. Take my bone folder and fold it completely, flipping it over. And now I'm going to fold it again in half. So I have the side. I'll bring it until the edge here and work with the bone folder. And let's do the other side, fold it up until the end. So this is one. And this is two, again, good side to good side. And then I'm going to fold it in half. So actually, I have 1 centimeter in each fold. We're trying to be precise, but it's all going to be glued and concealed, so don't worry if it's not perfect for the first time, okay? And you have two chances. Okay. Now, pay attention. I'm bringing the pocket, and I want to insert it inside. So first of all, what I need to do is cut it as the size of this small one, which is 12. So I will open the folds, measure until 12. This is five, ten, 12, and then I'm going to cut. Okay. Of course, you can also take your ruler, open it. Measure 12, mark with a pencil. Then cut. I like to cut it afterwards because if something goes wrong, you can just trim it and do it again. Okay? Now, I want to glue the pocket. So what I'm going to do is start by gluing the two pieces inside the small fold, the 12 centimeters. So how would I do that? I'll bring it to the edge of the table. I'll bring my glue brush and glue only the first fold. I'm working on the edge of the table, so I have a sharp line, and I'm going to glue it from the fold until the end. Okay? Take the bone folder, work on it. So this is one side. I'm going to flip it over and glue the other side. Put some glue on the first fold. Work on the edge of the table and connect it from the fold. And I'm folding it like in half to feel the edge of the paper to know I'm exactly inside the fold. Now, if for any reason you didn't cut it the same, what you can do is take your ruler and the knife and just trim it. Here I see it's a bit more. You can trim it again. It would be straight. Okay? Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to glue this side to the cloth. So I'm folding it inside so this won't interfere. I'll bring a piece of wastepaper put underneath, and I'm going to glue only the cloth, just the cloth on one side and on the other side at the same go. Otherwise, when you close it, you can't reach the other side. Okay? Just the cloth itself. I'll take the wastepaper out, and now I'm going to close it let me flip it over to see this is the side that you would see. Looks nice. You understand now why I think thicker material would be better because when you work with thicker paper, then it won't work so much, and it would be much more easy to do this part. Sometimes you'll see a bit of wrinkles or something. You can put a bit of weight on it so it won't move before moving on to the next stage. I'm flipping over the pocket, and now I'm folding what we already made. On this fold, look at the fold is outside. I'm holding it, closing the pocket. Okay? And now what we are going to do is glue these two parts, one on each side. So let me start with this side. I'll put a waste paper just in case, but because it's up here, you can just work, like pat it a bit and give it some glue. Okay, make sure it's not going inside. Just this is the movement you need to do. I'll take the waste paper out, and I'm going to fold it. And work with a bone folder. I love the combination of this purple and black. I'll flip it over, and let's do the other side. I'll bring another piece of waste paper just in case glue brush without a lot of glue. And I'm just from the pocket towards me, gluing the cloth. Okay? Don't go the other way. Take it out, hold the pocket, and then fold it. So we have ourself a pocket. This side won't be seen because this is the bottom side. And this side, you can see the edges because it is glued between these two layers, and you can just open the pocket Okay. Let me wait a second for it to dry. I'll put this aside. In the meantime, I will show you that I cut the end paper for the beginning. This is 14 centimeter because the cover is 15. I want half a centimeter on each side, and this is 21 like the paper inside. I think this is dry enough. So let me bring our binding. I will start from the back, okay, from the pocket. So this is going to be concealed. What I'm going to do is bring two boards for this side and two boards for this side, and I'll find something that has a bit of weights for me. So when I locate the pocket all around, half a centimeter all around, I can put a piece of weight or a stopper of any kind over here. But what you can also do, if you don't have something in your house that is heavy, you can mark it with a pin. You can mark the location with a pin, one here. And if you'll take a regular pin, you can put something like this here. And let's bring another pin. This is just a pin with a bid connected to it, and you can put like this. So now I can glue it, bring it to these stoppers, and it won't move. This is a nice trick. One more thing, make sure that the pocket opens towards the inside, okay, so things won't fall off, okay? I'll bring a piece of waste paper to put underneath. Now, what I want to do is glue the board here and just the edges of the paper. So I'll start by gluing the inside of the boards. I'm using my small brush now because I want to go inside where the elastic band is and go all over everything. Okay, so I'm going up until the cloth. Now I'll put a piece of weight here on the pocket, and I'm going just on the edges. Up until the end, here on the edges. At the end here. Making sure everything is glued properly. Now, don't be alarmed. Most of the glue is here. I'm moving the weight. I'm taking the pocket, making sure the open side is towards the book, and I'm bringing it to my stoppers. I see everything is straight here. I'll take this pin out. Take this and this out. Thank you. And I'm making sure everything is straight to my satisfaction. And then I'm taking my bone folder. I'll take my tephon bone folder. I'll move the waste paper. You can, of course, use this bone folder also. I'll glue everything, making sure it's not warping. Okay? Applying pressure to the edges here. And then I'm going inside with my bone folder inside a pocket like this and over here like this. I'll move these aside for a second. If you want, you can go inside the pocket and work on it, too. I love this trick. It looks great, right? Okay, let's close the side and work on the other side. I'll bring my paper, line it up. Again, you can put stoppers, but let's put the pins here, so I'll put one pin over here, one pin over here. And one over here as a stopper, I want making sure it's as I want it to be. Great. Again, I'll bring some waste paper. Put weight on it so it won't move. I'll glue the entire board. If you go on the cloth, I'm doing it on purpose. No worries. Remember, we have just half a centimeter that is pointing out. If there's something on the board, you can take it off. And now I'm going to work only on the edge of the paper. Making sure I have glue on everything, taking out the weight, lifting the paper. I'll take the waste paper out, bring my bone folder. And now I'll take my paper and bring it to my stoppers. As you can see, I have still time. I'm trying that it won't touch everything. See that I'm in the right location. Here I'm okay. Here I'm okay. Here I'm okay. I can touch it, take out the pins. And then work with a bone folder. If something is wrong, you can still lift it a bit and move it a bit if you need. You see I'm lifting it. You can see it's okay and then reconnecting as I need it too. Now it's important to work with a bone folder and see that everything is connected properly. I'm using my Typhon bone folder, but you can use the regular bone folder. If you have a special paper, you can put a piece of paper underneath and then rub it down. If you see that it's making it shiny or something, you can put a piece of paper on it and then rub it. Okay? This paper doesn't have this problem, but sometimes you have problem of shiny paper when you are working with a bone folder. I think we are finished. It looks great. What I want to do is put paper between the beginning and the covers, just for the moisture not to go inside the beginning and end of the book. So I'll close it up. Let me close the elastic band because I have one. I'll put it underneath pressure, clean out everything, and I'll see you in the next and final lesson. See you there. 15. Conclusion: So here we are with our final sketchbook. I'm so proud of you. Let's take a moment, appreciate what we have made. The flexibility of the spine, the pocket at the end. You would love. You would love your sketchbook, I'm sure. And I would love to see what you have made. So please share it with us in the class projects. I promise to see each and every submitted work, offer feedback, and answer questions if you have any. I will also really appreciate it if you could take a moment and leave a review. That helps tremendously. It helps me, and also it helps others find this class. You are welcome to see my other classes here on Skillshare. And if you would like to see my creative journey, you can see my videos and tutorials on YouTube. So thank you for being here and for watching, and I will see you in my next class.