The next morning, the covers were dry. I punched holes in them, then started to sew the book together. It wasn’t difficult, but definitely fiddly and I’m glad I had clear instructions in my books.

When I’d finished I wasn’t happy, though. The spine was very loose, and not because the thread wasn’t tight enough. I have a commercially made chain stitched book, and it was a lot more stable. I noticed that there were differences in the way it was done and the instructions I was following. The instructions resulted in the first and last line of holes being held together by stitches that are less supportive than the middle one, and the commercial book appeared to have only the middle kind of stitching.

So I pulled the whole thing apart and made holes in the signatures and cover for two more lines of stitches. This worked a lot better, giving much more stability to the spine.

A bit more trimming of pages later, and it was done. The front:

The back:

The pages:

From the cover side: