This class is suitable for students of all abilities
 

In this workshop Janina will guide you through all the steps to make a book using the Secret Belgian Binding technique; a very intriguing and unusual binding style invented in the mid-1980s by Anne Goy, a Belgian bookbinder.
 

Looking for a Western version of the traditional Japanese stab binding techniques, she wanted a book that would open flat but with the appearance of the stab sewing. Anne Goy calls this binding the "crisscross binding".
 

The Secret Belgian Binding is a method of bookbinding that uses two sets of sewing, giving a distinct thread pattern on the cover and spine of the finished book. The first sewing stage joins the three pieces of the cover boards together and the second sewing stage is used to bind the pages into the cover boards.
 

The first stage will be to make the cover, which is constructed from three separate pieces. The shapes are cut from greyboard, covered with decorative paper, and placed under weight to dry.  Once dry the three parts of the cover are sewn together using the ‘criss cross’ stitch.  The next stage is to trim and fold paper into the correct size for the book and to nest the trimmed sheets into ‘signatures’.  The final step is to sew the individual signatures into the spine.
 

The project will be an A6 landscape format book.  Once you have mastered the processes you will find this is a very flexible style and can experiment with making more books in different sizes, with different papers and materials, after the workshop.
 

All steps will be fully demonstrated and accompanied by step by step written instructions for you to download and keep.