Shalott Press

A Thread Unraveled by @theheirofashandfire

Maedhros wakes up again, on the first morning of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Of course, nobody calls it that. For them, it hasn't happened yet.

Approximately one million years later, here is my project from the yearly Renegade Exchange! Truly, this fic was such a pleasure to work on. I bound this one fandom blind-ish, which is to say that I had the passing familiarity with LOTR that any D&D player / child who read any fantasy she could get her hands on has. I did very much come out of this bind with a new found love for a bunch of dysfunctional elves. Love those guys, and love this incredible fic.

About the Bind

Text Block: 20/50 lb cream short grain

Endpapers: Indian Marbles in Gold/Silver on Black (~125 gsm), prepared as made endpapers

Case Style: three piece in-boards bradel binding, covered with Verona bookcloth in coal

Cover and Titling: foiled using the WRMK foil quill attachment with a Silhouette Portrait 3 and only a medium amount of swearing and threatening the vinyl cutter with bodily harm

Additional typeset pictures, as well as progress pictures and construction / design notes below the cut.

I really enjoy your Silmarillion study guide and assorted character notes, they have been so helpful whilst I have been reading the Silmarillion, and they have really helped me to keep things straight. I am an amateur fanbinder and would love to typeset and bind this into a physical book or pamphlet, but don't want to proceed without your permission. Rest assured, if you say yes, it would not be sold or distributed anywhere but would be solely for my reading pleasure and my bookshelf. (Also I share photos of the binds I have finished on my tumblr if it would be helpful to see the kind of things that I bind)

Thanks either way!

Fan binding of Sweater Weather by @lumosinlove

This is a German bradel style binding with a rounded and backed spine. I used an 8mm spacer for my hinges, which I think is my new preference n I really love the look and how well it opens.

I chose not to sew my own end bands here and instead wrapped some decorative paper around the core. I have seen this on some other bindings and really thought it looked sleek. The edges are painted with acrylic ink using a sponge and then toothbrush to flick paint on top. Spine and corner material is from Neenah (I think!) intended to mimic the look of leather. It was very lovely to work with and I wish I knew where I got it so I could get more! The marbled paper on the outside was marbled by me. Technique is called “over marbling” and is a result of marbling the paper once, and when it dries, re-aluming and marbling a new pattern over the top. Typically with translucent paints to allow the pattern underneath to show through.

I have found that the sewn board binding method is much more approachable than the case binding method, since with sewn board binding, there is only minimal use of adhesives (and no nerve-wracking moment of truth when you run the risk of gluing the cover to the text block upside-down). However, since the case binding method is more popular with fanbinders and amateur bookbinders online generally, I haven't been able to find as much in the way of guides for more decorative cover elements for sewn board binding. Here are my notes from figuring out how to adapt the sewn board binding process to make a recessed inset in the front cover for the title on the cover of my most recent fanbinding process for @bettsfic's ghost in the pearl.

1. Make a model I had so much trouble conceptualizing what steps would have to be taken in what order that I made a tiny model out of scrap paper to guide the process of the actual assembly.

2. Make endpapers This was my first time using laminated endpapers (see DAS Bookbinding's videos on made endpapers for more instructions) and I wasn't sure it would be compatible with the sewn board method either, but it turned out in the end! You will need 2 sets of made endpapers for each copy of the book you're making, so I made 4. If your decorative paper has a right-side up, keep in mind when attaching the decorative endpaper to the plain colored paper that will sit next to the text block that the two sets of made endpapers will mirror each other, and check what direction the pattern is going before tipping the decorative paper to the colored paper. (Colored paper is a misnomer here - the colored paper I used is only a shade or two darker than the paper I used for the text block). Fold the final page of colored paper around the back to the text block - this is now your waste sheet.

3. Fold and arrange signatures The order of your signatures goes like this: card/stiff paper (which will hold your board), made endpaper, text block signatures, made endpaper, card/stiff paper. Get them in the right order, then punch holes in the signatures and sew them together. Line the spine at this stage as well.

4. Make your cover art, pick your cover art, and decide on placement I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted for the cover art, so I experimented with a couple of different options. I was making 2 copies, so I decided I'd pick my 2 favorite options. Then came deciding where the cover art would go and how much would be visible through the inset. Keep in mind where the spine stiffener and board coverings will be placed as well when deciding on your inset placement.

At this stage, you'll also add your board (or whatever you are using to stiffen the covers, like cardstock. Since this was a quarto-sized project, I didn't use board, just a piece of heavy cardstock.)

5. Prick corners, cut inset, and adhere title art to inner cover Place a piece of cardboard or scrap bookboard between the front cover and the decorative endpaper to protect the pages beneath. Close the book and put your cover art where you want it to ultimately go. Then prick the corners of where you will be cutting out the inset with an awl. (I wasn't using bookboard, so I didn't have to use much force to get the awl through the cover and cardstock stiffener.) Now, both the cover art and the cover have been punched where you want the edges to be.

Remove the art and the protective cardboard/scrap bookboard, and take a pen and mark through the holes you punched to show you where to paste the art.

Open the book so only the outer front cover is against the cutting mat and cut out the inset with a knife and ruler. (I didn't take a photo of this stage and wish I had!)

Then cut the art to the appropriate size (ideally a little bigger than the inset window, line the corner pricks on the cover art up with the pen marks on the inside cover, close the outside cover (with inset cut) to check fit and make final adjustments, and adhere cover art to inner cover.

6. Make and adhere spine and adhere covering material to covers

Once again, I didn't take as many pictures as maybe I should have at this stage? I used bookcloth for both the spine and the covers. I did find it was pretty forgiving and molded easily around the inset window while the adhesive was wet.

7. Adhere covering material, cut out window, trim window edges, and adhere around board Again, open the book with the front cover facing down. Align your ruler on the diagonal to 2 of the inset window's corners and cut. It helps to be very precise here and cut as far as you can into the corner itself to aid in the process of folding the covering material around the board. Then trim the inset flaps so you don't have so much material to work with and fold it around the cover. Adhere with PVA or your adhesive of choice.

8. Adhere sides of inset window to cover art page+inside of front cover (optional), then adhere head, tail, and fore edge to cover I found that I was concerned there was too much of a gap between the outer and inner part of the front cover near the inset window (you can see it in the picture below - you could easily slip a piece of paper in through that window!) so I decided to glue it down. At this point, I started to feel I was using so much PVA that this project was kind of bending the original "minimal adhesive" ethos of the sewn board binding, but it's still a lot less harrowing than a cased-in book, I suspect. So that optional, but recommended. Once you have done that, adhere the head, tail, and fore edge for the front and back cover. You will no longer be able to open the book to see the inner front cover folio with the cover art attached - the cover will now open as one leaf.

9. Paste down endpaper and tip on decorated endpaper to first page of colored paper to form the laminated (or "made") endpaper

You are very nearly done now! Just finishing touches to cover the inner board and the plain reverse side of the decorative endpaper! As you can see from this picture, the decorated endpaper and the darker tan paper are not glued all the way through - just at the fore edge - but you wouldn't know it unless you intentionally tried to open up that leaf and see inside of it, like I'm doing here.

10. Admire the results!

A couple little design notes for this project: I have never seen Westworld and read this fic solely on the strength of my admiration for betts' writing and the tags, but I understand that it is Western primarily in an aesthetic sense. Still, the fic itself is also a bit Western in an aesthetic sense, so I went with a map of the US from the early 1900's for endpapers and went with an earthy sepia color palette for the bookcloth and cover art. I also wanted to add some slightly more futuristic elements (since some of the main characters are, crucially, robots), hence the title font, and some more delicate feminine elements to hint at the fic's contents and themes (hence the florals and the dusty pink for one of the covers).

I was delighted to send betts a copy, which she got earlier this week! Thank you for writing this fic that has haunted me for years and generously giving me permission to share this tutorial inspired by this lovely work! (Go read something by betts - she has written in literally so many fandoms, you're bound to find something you like!)

Notes for a next project: This was kind of "easy mode" to test this method for making insets with the sewn-board method, since this fic was ~7k and only required 2 signatures in a quarto format. For a future folio-sized project, my plan is to use 1 single piece of 3mm board for the back cover and two pieces of 1.5mm board on top of each other, one that I cut the inset into and wrap the covering material around, and one that I leave whole and attach to the inner leaf of the sewn-in cover sleeve. I don't know how well that will work, but I think that will give the best results if I can figure out how to do it!

I made a book out of the 1938 War of the Worlds radio drama!

(which you can listen to here on archive.org)

From @renegadeguild ‘s 2025 6th Renegade Bindery Exchange made for @bluejayblueskies of their delightful fic True Love’s Something!

This book was a ton of fun and had a number of new challenges for me!

This Tornado Loves You, a frerard fic by the amazing @theopteryx, and one of my favourites. It's been a fun ride doing this fic, as I ended up designing and hand painting the cover paper in gouache before subsequently affixing the painted paper to the cover (prev post of the cover design). As a result it is one of the most involved covers I've done; sometimes you have a design in your brain and you gotta see her through, and I really enjoyed being able to incorporate aspects of the story by doing so into the cover. Technique wise in retrospect, thick layers of gouache are not the most ideal to use for cover designs for bookbinding as they can flake, unlike acrylic, but that's food for thought later. This book was also my first attempt at double core endband (the other books I've posted I did after the endbands for this book), but the originals (although pretty and decently done) I actually scrapped as I came up with a design that more represents the maze, compared to the previous design; it's also not the only part I've re-done, as the grave corner design I actually re-painted to better fit the other corner art pieces.

Fic details and link below the readmore: