How to do a Simple Japanese Book Binding

I bind all my own sketchbooks by hand, because that way I can spend my money on buying really good paper instead of an already bound sketchbook with low quality paper. It also allows me to insert interesting stuff in my sketchbooks for inspiration, like pages from old national geographics or pages from books written in languages I don't speak or maps from places I've never been.

So I thought I'd do some simple book binding tutorials! This tutorial is for a four hole Japanese binding, which looks like this:

At minimum you'll need paper, scissors, some thread and a needle. If you want to make a book with a cover, you'll also want some cardboard. If you are making a book with a lot of pages, you may also want to invest in an awl to pre-poke holes.

1. First, cut your paper into pages. make sure they are the same size you want the pages of your book to be.

2. Then mark four points on the side of the pages you want to bind. The marks should be equidistant. (In book-speak these are called stations.) I have numbered them for this tutorial.

3. Thread your needle and make a knot at the end. Then enter station 2 from the back.

4. Loop the thread around the spine and enter station 2 from the back again. Then enter station 1 from the front.

5. loop the thread over the side of the spine and enter station 1 from the front again. Then loop the thread over the top of the spine and reenter station 1 through the front.

6. Then enter station 2 from the back, then station 3 through the front. Look the thread around the spine and enter station 3 through the front again. Then enter station 4 from the back, loop the thread around the spine and enter station 4 from the back again. Loop the thread around the top of the spine and enter station four from the back again.