How to tie a weaver's knot

Fanbinding - Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know

This is my last round of experimenting with bamboo strips, for now at least. For these books, I used bamboo for the spine, and attached them to hard boards for the cover. The string going through the cover boards follows the look of a stab binding, but doesn't actually go through the pages. Instead, the folded pages are sewn to the strings on the spine with a narrower thread, in a variation of the secret Belgian/crisscross binding. The spine ends up being very flexible; it can lie flat or even fold all the way backwards, and although it ends up feeling kind of "loose," it's actually pretty sturdy. I made a box for the set to give them some more stability when sitting on my bookshelf.

Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know features a couple of plot-relevant books, so I thought it made sense to use with a binding method that called attention to itself. Many thanks to @spockandawe for letting me use your typeset!

Fandom Trumps Hate 2025

This is EHyde / Teleport Books' virtual stall for the 2025 Fandom Trumps Hate craft bazaar

I am offering one typeset and hand-bound book of a fanfic of your choice -- see above for some examples (including a few I've made for previous auctions) and see below for more info!

Fanbinding: What We Make by EHyde

I made a book with rearrangeable sections! What We Make is an Akatsuki no Yona au based on a prompt from @sorasan000, where Yon-hi (Soowon's mother) is a) a priest and b) a time traveler (at the time it was written, Yon-hi was still Free Real Estate so this version of her is basically an OC). The fic follows her personal timeline, as she interacts with King Hiryuu's timeline out of order.

When I posted this on ao3, I posted the chapters in reading order, and titled the chapters with their position in the historic timeline (so, for example, chapter 2 was titled "four" because it was the fourth in the historical sequence). Here, I have titled the sections with their reading order/Yon-hi's pov, and they're currently bound in the historical sequence, but they can be rebound in any order.

Each section is folded and sewn individually as a pamphlet, none of them have more of a title page than any others. The cover is just two boards with a strip of sturdy leather between them, and the sections are bound together by a wrapped cord holding everything in place (it works the same as a 'travelers notebook' but it's one long cord instead of elastics). This is a small book, same size as an 8-page zine, and I think if I were making something bigger I would want to do more to stabilize the spine. But at this size it works fine.

Ficbinding: "The Scarlet Lotus" by Rainbowninja167

I finally bound the typeset I received from @fantailpress in the 2023 Renegade typeset exchange! This is a Wangxian Scarlet Pimpernel AU, so I based the cover design on the first American edition of The Scarlet Pimpernel, using a font from the typeset and a flower from my endpapers.

The turn-ins on the spine look weird because I was experimenting with using felt as a spine stiffener, which had some aspects I liked (flexible without being floppy, doesn't crease) but also had this pretty visible downside.

After testing the idea with popsicle sticks, I wanted to do the project for real, so here's a bamboo slip scroll with pages bound inside. For the contents, I went with @romanceyourdemons' Second Century Warlord post (it's period appropriate!).

A paper I used as reference: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373343901_Bindings_of_Ancient_Chinese_Bamboo_and_Wood_Scrolls

If you look on online marketplaces you can find modern bamboo scrolls, generally made with thicker and wider pieces of bamboo than this. The strips that I used are on the smaller side (I took them from a placemat) but still within the range of historical finds, which apparently could be as narrow as 5mm. But the spacing of the binding should probably be either closer to the edges or closer to the center (I did it this way because of where I wanted the paper to be attached).

The pages are sewn to the bindings of a single bamboo strip in the center, in a variation of the "Secret Belgian" binding technique, but I added a set of french link stitches in the center (since the anchor points are still pretty far apart) and kettle stitches at the top and bottom (since with only two anchor points, I needed something else to hold the signatures together when I moved from one signature to the next).

The painting wasn't part of my original design, but it looked awfully bare with just the title and border so I figured, what the heck, let's try.

Thank you! If you mean imposing the pages, I use https://momijizukamori.github.io/bookbinder-js/ -- for this one I used the "petite" option under "wacky small layouts" and printed on A5 paper, but there are options that will work for A4/letter paper too.

For the typesetting and book layout itself I use Affinity Publisher and set the page size to the actual page size of the finished book, and then just work as I normally do, although there's a lot more manual adjustment of hyphenation etc.

The Disappearance of Madam Wen by EHyde

Tiny book! This is a 5000-word trans Wen Ruohan fic that I wrote a couple of years ago, and I decided to bind it using some leftover materials from other projects. It's so small I couldn't fit the full title on the spine, but I didn't want to simply shorten it, so I went with a strikethrough as a compromise.

"The Other Mountain" by nirejseki

I was thrilled to be able to bind this Wen Ruohan/Lan Qiren fic for @robininthelabyrinth. As you can see I stuck with Wen colors for the bind--Lan Qiren marries into the Wen sect, after all. I found this lovely red chiyogami paper that had a bit of a stylized cloud pattern going on and thought it would be perfect for the endpapers, and a bit of the cover decoration as well (it's also lining the inside of the slipcase). I carried that style of stylized cloud into the outside of the slipcase, and tried to echo it in the horizontal lines on the title page and chapter headers too.

Fonts used: Solvieg (titles) and Sorts Mill Goudy (text)

Ficbinding: radical nephrectomies and other romantic gestures by nevertheless

Another book for the same charity raffle. This is a heartwarming, soft, consensual...cannibalism and vore fic. I love it so much. My favorite part of this book is the hand-marbled paper--I'm still pretty inexperienced with marbling and this might be my favorite piece of marbled paper I've made so far. I tried so many different patterns until I got something suitably, uh, meaty. I was inspired to use the raw edge of a piece of leather for the outer cover by a photo someone shared in the @renegadeguild server.

The text is set in EB Garamond, except for the ampersand in the title which is Goudy Bookletter 1911 (look I just really like the Goudy ampersand okay). The initials are Imperator.

Ficbinding: verses by quigonejinn

One of two books for a charity raffle winner, this is a postcanon xiyao fic with a ... happy? ending (listen, it really is a happy ending!). I wanted this to be elegant & ornate, but not overly decorated. I borrowed the style of chapter headings (the number and an ornament to the side) from Catwings--although the ornament is different, I loved that design the moment I saw it and have always wanted to find a book to use it for.

The frame on the cover and the endpapers are chiyogami paper I was able to get at my local craft store--it's not my first time using crane chiyogami paper on a xiyao fic, somehow it just fits. Some experimentation with negative space on the cover.

The title and body of the fic are set in Walleye, and the initials are Floral Capitals. The ornaments are from the "Vintage Decorative Signs" series of fonts.

Ficbinding: Salvage by @muffinlance (typeset by @no-name-publishing)

I've recently been getting back into AtLA fic as my kids are watching the series. I was already thinking about binding Salvage when I realized that @no-name-publishing had already typeset it; thank you for letting me use your work!

The marbled paper on the cover is a piece I made myself a few months ago, but unfortunately I only had one letter-sized sheet and couldn't do a standard paper w/leather spine cover. But restriction breeds creativity as the saying goes, so I cut the paper on the diagonal, and built the rest of the cover around that.

I decided that a wave pattern would look cool to fill the remaining space, so I cut a stencil with my Silhouette and painted the design with Angelus leather paint, which I used for the first time here and can't recommend enough for applying titles/designs on leather covers. The endpapers were done with the foil quill attachment; both designs are from this artist.

I have told my eldest that she can read this if she's very careful with it :D

Ficbinding: The Exorcism of Lan Yuan by EHyde

I've been bookbinding for 2+ years and this is my first binding of my own work! Ignore the unfortunate glue stain on the front cover

Since this is my own fic I can be as self-indulgent as I want. I did a hardcover B6 size book even though the fic is only 5k. I made a title page in six layers of translucent paper, with one more word on each layer, so that at first look, the name "Lan Yuan" is almost completely faded away. Rather than place the title on the cover, I made a cutout window with one more additional translucent layer.

The cover fabric is shot dupioni, blue that shifts to red when seen at an angle. I also made red endbands. The typeset itself is minimal, with wide margins, set in Coelacanth (one of my favorite text fonts).