Caterpillar Spine Stitch - Mike Commons

As far as I know, I am the only one ever to attempt a vertical caterpillar stitch. I tried it out as an experiment and it worked. The book is 2.75 inches by 4.25 inches tall. There are 17 signatures of 2 folio's totaling 136 pages of Mohawk Superfine 100 lb paper. The caterpillar is made from 4 yards of brown waxed thread. For those familiar with the caterpillar stitch, turning it vertical made it interesting making this book. The stitch needed to be sewn through the entire book, cover to cover each time a new segment of the caterpillar was added. This made it difficult to push the needle through the entire book as a whole and I relied heavily on pliers to pull the needle and thread through each time. The book took 5 hours to complete

Greek Stitch - Mike Commons

This book is 2.75 inches by 4.25 inches. The binding is made up of 3 pairs of the Greek Stitch. In order to use the Greek Stitch, you must have a minimum of 20 signatures. In the past 2 books I made, I had 13 signatures of 3 folio's, so I took the 3rd folio from each signature and created 6 more pairs of 2 folio's and added a folio to the last signature to create 20 folio's of 2 pages totaling 160 pages of Mohawk Superfine 100 lb paper. The Greek stitch requires you to sew half of the signatures to the front cover, and then the other half to the back. Once they are sewn, you do a figure eight stitch to join the two halves together. I combined purple and yellow from alternate sides to celebrate the uniqueness of the stitch. The book took 5 hours to complete.

Celtic Weave - Mike Commons

This book is 2 and 3/4 inch by 4 and 1/4 inches. There are 13 signatures with 3 folio's totaling 156 pages. The paper is mohawk superfine 100 lb. There are two Celtic Weave stitches separated by a 2 needle Coptic Stitch in the middle. The Celtic Weave took a while to figure out, but the most confusing part was finishing the stitch with the cover. Each Celtic Weave required 2 lengths of different color waxed thread at 2 yards each and 4 needles. I stitched the top weave cover to cover and then the bottom weave cover to cover and finished with the Coptic. I themed the stitches with brown and an olive green thread. The book took 4.5 hours to complete.

Caterpillar Coptic - Mike Commons

The book is 2 and 3/4 inch by 4 and a 1/4 inches. There are 13 signatures with 3 folio's totaling 156 pages. The caterpillar stitch starts on the edge of the left and moves to the right, however the book can be rotated so the caterpillar is inverted. The stitching is waxed thread and each pair of coptic stitches took 1 yard each and the caterpillar took about 5 yards. The paper is mohawk superfine 100 lb. The book took 7 hours to complete.