Monday Make: How To Make Little Notebooks

Monday Make: This week's project

You will need:
paper (enough to make as many pages as you want)
PVA glue
an old paintbrush (for applying glue)
a really sharp rotary blade
needle and thread
awl tool (hole making pokey stick)
scissors
cutting board
metal ruler
cardboard
some pegs
fabric of choice
and a guillotine is useful.

Cut your paper to twice the size you'd like your notebook to be (with a little extra if you want to be picky about the size as we'll be trimming the edges later).

Fold all the pages, making sure you've got nice sharp edges.
Place them like above, with no more than about six pages together so it's not too bulky.

Poke holes along where the spine will be using the awl. You can do it without an awl but it may hurt your fingers. 
I found two at the top around 1cm apart and two at the bottom is great.

Sew all the pages together. I found this (pictured above) to be the best way of keeping the sections together.

Tighten it all up and knot the ends.

Coat a strip of your fabric in PVA and stick it along the spine of your pages. Fasten with some pegs and leave it to thoroughly dry.

Once dry, trim the top, bottom and side edges neatly using your ruler, rotary blade and cutting board.

Measure the book now the edges are trimmed and cut the cardboard the same size, including a strip for the spine.

Glue the cardboard to the underside of your fabric.

Fold all the fabric edges in neatly, gluing all the time to ensure it's all covered, including the cardboard.

Pop your pages in so that the outside pages glue to the inside of the cover. Fasten with pegs and leave to dry.

This method is not perfect and after a few attempts I have found the following issues; the pegs leave marks on the outside of the cover, which apparently do not iron out, the spines still feel  little loose (I wonder if using paper rather than fabric might cure this?) and the cardboard I used warped like hell. Probably should have used thicker cardboard or left them to dry under something heavy and non-stick.

Anyone have any suggestions?

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