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c/bookbindersjenny_halljenny_hall19d agoProlific Poster

I chose hand sewing over machine stitching and I'm never going back

Everyone in my bindery group raves about their sewing machines, but I stuck with hand sewing for my last project, a 400-page journal. It took me nearly 8 hours, but the thread tension was perfect and I could control every stitch without any skipped loops. Has anyone else found hand sewing gives a cleaner spine for smaller runs?
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3 Comments
grant.felix
Eight hours by hand for four hundred pages? You're a more patient person than I am, that's for sure. I'd have thrown the whole thing across the room by page fifty. But I can see the appeal if you're after that perfect control.
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faithcampbell
My friend actually tried this exact thing last year with a novel she was copyediting. She said it took her almost ten hours by hand, and by page 200 her hand was cramping so bad she could barely hold a pen. @grant.felix I think you'd appreciate her story because she ended up throwing the whole stack of papers across the kitchen and calling it quits after three days of rewriting. She still talks about how the control was amazing for catching tiny errors, but the physical pain wasn't worth it. Ever try a hybrid approach, like typing the bulk and only hand-copying the tricky parts?
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grantw32
grantw3218d ago
Your friend is braver than me, I would've launched that manuscript out the window by lunchtime on day one. @grant.felix must have the patience of a saint to even attempt four hundred pages by hand. Hybrid sounds smart though, just copy the nasty bits and type the rest before your hand falls off.
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