Towns End Bindery

Binding of Respite, Despite by Synthpop.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/37498651

If you ship Thancred and Urianger and love painful pining then I can not recommend this enough. It is beautiful and I cry every time.

This one gave me a lot of trouble and Im not entirely happy with how it came out. I actually ended up making the case TWICE cause the first one’s for-edge was way too close to the textblock and the paper I was using to cover it was rather thin and wrinkled irreparably on the back.

So I tried again with new paper (I like this design a lot better anyway).

Coptic notebook (Aug 2025) using beautiful handmade marbled paper by @renato-crepaldi (Aug 2023).

I don't make ficbindings with coptic binding very often because I like those to look more similar to traditionally published works. Coptic stitch is really satisfying to me though because it doesn't require glue to hold the covers and pages together, and because I like how the functional bits of the binding are clearly visible.

Bind #43 Old Gods, New Tricks by @bootsnblossoms & @kryptaria Date Completed: 12/27/2025 Size: Quarto.  217 pages, 34,631 words

Summary: As MI6's senior quartermaster, Q is accustomed to dealing with all manner of oddities. But an agent who won't stay dead, a bomb in his office, and bad tea all combine to make for a stressful day. The muggers on the way home only make matters worse. And that's before the owl shows up.

I typeset this fic towards the end of summer and didn’t get around to binding it until now, which actually worked well since the story has a winter setting.  Centaur for the bodyfont, WoodGods for the titles, and an owl dingbat for some minimal decoration. 

Pretty standard bind overall.  Cover papers are some paste paper I made this summer and I had to cut the endpapers twice because apparently I can’t measure.

Projects 49, Bind 67, and Binderary Book #8 Queueing Problems (series) by Anonymous Completed: February 21, 2026 Size:  Legal Quarto.  43,590 words, 219 pages

The Curse of the Deserted Heart bookbinding, January 2026.

I never posted the pics of this, oops! Here are the two identical books I made for the Renegade bookbinding exchange, one for my assigned recipient and one for the author. I had a great time making these, including the cover art that I drew to match the description of the silly novel from the story itself.

Fic is on ao3 here! It's a fun and silly romance! Do you need to read a silly Mummy movie fic? Of course you do.

I am OVER THE MOON with gratitude for the wonderful bookbinder and GO fan @brunheiffer, who kindly bound my Good Omens AU, "Out of the Blue". IT'S GORGEOUS. The pics cannot convey the SPARKLY SHINY cover! It's so much more sparkly than this!!

The spine is lovely too with more sparkly, raised lettering:

The interior is just as stunning:

And check out the attached page marker ribbon, with its little charms on the end -- a book and sunglasses!

I also love the way reader comments were included as "Praise for Out of the Blue" -- very clever and a nice surprise:

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! I will treasure this handmade book of one of my favorite stories. You are so talented and generous!

Link to the story:

FINALLY was able to grab a very special package from my parents' place and OH MY GOD I can't believe I'm holding a bound copy of one of my fics!!

Why not spend a soothing minute watching me hand-bind a zine for Ojai's Pride Festival this weekend?

I originally planned to mix it up more on the vibes between the two editions (partly so I myself could keep them straight and didn't gift the couples copies with the wrong names), but.... these marble print fabrics are just too powerful, I couldn't say no. I did enough differentiating with the titling and endpapers, it all worked out!

And, naturally, they both needed some edge illustration to take it to the next level!!

So, the green set. I found this gorgeous black and white paper a couple weeks ago at my local art store, and it was SO striking that I grabbed a couple sheets. I was worried at first that it was going to be too busy with the marbled fabric on the cover, but couldn't find anything else that sparked joy, and... i shouldn't have stressed so much, the combo is fantastic. I should trust the maximalist voices in my head! For this one I drew the scene from osgiliath, looking out at minas tirith

After THAT, i was looking to draw something that specifically wasn't More Buildings 😂 I had a pretty magenta paper I've been sitting on that harmonized surprisingly well with the minor colors in the blue fabric. I originally had my eye on a matching leather, but backed away to the same warm navy hide I used for the guestbook, which really gave the whole thing some nice dignity. And the opposite of drawing buildings is drawing CREATURES, so i went absolutely ham on balrog cross-hatching

Both these sets were a ton of fun and came out deliciously! And finished drying two whole days before the wedding! I got PLANY of time 🤣 But truly, I'm not very good at repeating myself, so it means a lot to me that I can be this many lords of the rings deep and still be finding new ways to delight myself. I had a lot of fun with these sets!!

I went to another bookbinding workshop 🩵

I've been fond of Gen Urobuchi's writing since first discovering him through Psycho Pass in middle school. In late 2025 I decided to finally get into Fate by way of watching Fate Zero, which (though I enjoyed) is a pretty poor anime adaptation of his light novel. It was never officially translated to English, and mostly exists as a crowdsourced and completely un-proofread fantranslation hosted as plaintext on a forum wiki, or a very poorly formatted epub of of the same text. So when a friend mentioned wanting to read the originals, I was excited to whip out a skill I happened to pick up a little earlier in the year: bookbinding!

This was my second bookbinding project ever, so for ease of working I decided to combine volumes 1-2 into an omnibus. Having a bigger book means less agonizing over measuring and cutting things to exact millimeters, but it also meant I had about 3 weeks total to copyedit and typeset 500-600 pages, and then turn them into a finished book. I ended up having to rewrite almost full pages at a time, and just tunnel visioned on proofreading and typesetting it until about 4 days before my deadline.

My printer is cooperative, so after getting everything formatted, the actual bookbinding part was fairly straightforward. It's a letter folio, so two pages are printed side by side on letter paper and folded in half shortways to get 4 pages, which is nice because it means my 550 page pdf was only around 150 sheets of paper to print. The folded pages get stacked into pamphlets called signatures and then sewn together, which I remembered to take wip photos of!

Here you can see all the stacked signatures, and the cord it was sewn around. A lot of modern books pretend to be sewn on cords to have a kind of fancy or vintage feel, but in this style of binding theyre structural elements and give support to the spine, and then are used to attach the covers (which I did not remember to take a picture of). The combination of folds and sewing thread makes the spine thicker than the opposite edge, which is called swell. The second photo there shows how the spine is rounded to offset the folds/seams and minimize that swell. The cloth on top is cheesecloth glued down to strengthen the spine.

I was honestly expecting these to be unwieldy or delicate decoration pieces, but the level of construction makes them handle pretty well.

+ Photos my friend sent of both volumes together after I got to the second omnibus.

I selected this fic to bind for a recent Heated Rivalry book exchange because I adore the rich cast of OCs and the addition of a group of queer athletes to the boys' lives. Give Shane Queer Friends agenda!

Rainbow endbands in honor of the Quebec Skate Queers group chat in the fic. First attempt at what I think are called library corners (?) adds a neat little detail.

This tiny book was created for a personal trade with a friend. Making it reminded me how much I enjoy tinies. This project was great,I got to use scraps from so many different decorative papers and bookcloth. Lots of black and gold for the Boston Raiders!