Handmade Bookbinding: Soft Cover Long Stitch

Sketchbooks are versatile and essential tools for an artist’s practice. Creating your own handmade book can deepen your connection to the creative process, making them significant in your artistic journey. Photographer and visual arts educator, Kelly Webeck, has maintained a sketchbook practice throughout her career. She uses them as a source of inspiration, to plan photoshoots, find relationships between images, and explore mediums beyond photography in experimental and expressive ways. She writes extensively and honestly in these creative journals about her life and dreams, often sourcing text for artist statements, grants, and other documents from these writings.

In this comprehensive online workshop, Kelly focuses on one important part of the sketchbook-making process—binding its important pages together. Over two Saturdays in November, Kelly introduces the basics of bookbinding and then the participants complete the workshop with a self-made softcover sketchbook. Throughout, Kelly shares her expertise in bookmaking, along with tips and tricks she has learned over the past 10+ years. She introduces participants to the variety of materials needed to bind a book and demonstrates how to bind a softcover sketchbook using a variation of the long stitch. Kelly also shares examples from her own library of handmade books, showing ways to customize them based on cover materials and paper choices. These books serve as creative examples throughout the workshop

In the first session, Kelly introduces the essential bookbinding tools and materials, ensuring participants know how to use them safely. She covers professional best practices and shares tips for working with alternative materials. Participants are provided a materials list before the first session and then learn how to use them to put together a book. Kelly provides clear instructions for what needs to be ready for the second session.

On the second Saturday, the group binds their books together. Participants watch Kelly’s tabletop camera as she demonstrates the stitching, with a view of her hands and a printable handout with step-by-step instructions. Knowing how to bind your own books allows you to customize them with different types of paper, test prints, and photographs. While the books we bind are blank, this sewing technique is an essential skill to master for future artist books filled with photographs and other creative personalization.