“To sew the book, fold the vellum slips about 112 inch from one end and bend to a right angle. Place your front end-paper outside downwards, with the back even with the edge of a table or board, and place your folded slips with their shorter ends under it. Then insert your needle from the outside, at the head “kettle stitch” mark, into the centre of the section and bring it out at the first band mark; put the slip in position and reinsert your needle at the mark on the other side of the slip, and so on to the end of the section, coming out at the tail kettle stitch. This should leave your section with a thread,[98] passing alternately along the centre fold inside and across the slips outside, with a loose end hanging from the kettle stitch mark where you began, and a thread with the needle hanging from the other kettle stitch mark (fig. [193]). [p348]
“Lay on your next section and sew it in the same way but in the reverse direction, tying up with the first loose end when you come to it. Sew the whole book in the same way, tying on a new needleful of thread as each is exhausted, making practically a continuous thread going backwards and forwards inside the sections and across the slips from end to end of the book. Each succeeding kettle stitch should be caught up by a loop (fig. [194]), and it is well to catch together the loose threads crossing the slips.
“When the book is sewn, the back may be covered with thin glue and lined with a piece of leather, but as this is a little difficult to manage neatly, and as the book will hold together without it, for a temporary binding the sections may be left without glue.
“For the cover cut a piece of covering vellum[99] (vellum with a surface) large enough to cover the book and to leave a margin of 112 inches all round. Mark this with a folder on the underside, as shown at A, fig. [195]. Spaces (1) and (2) are the size of the sides of the book with the surrounding “squares,”[100] space (3) is the width of the back, and space (4) the width for the overlaps on the foredge.[101] Cut the corners as shown at (5), and fold the edges over as at B, and then fold over the overlaps [p349] and back as at C. Be sure to make all folds sharp and true.
“To avoid mistakes it is well to make a cover of stiff [p350] paper first, and then, when that fits exactly, to mark up the vellum from it.
“On the inside of the vellum cover, mark faint lines about 34 inch from, and parallel to, the creases of the back, and further lines about 14 inch from these. Place your book in the cover and mark the places where the slips cross these lines. Make slits in the cover there, and lace the slips through them (fig. [196]), first putting a piece of loose, toned paper inside the cover to prevent any marks on the book from showing through the vellum. Then lace pieces of silk ribbon of good quality[102] through the cover and end-papers, leaving the ends long enough to tie.”