Today, I want to demonstrate the single colour bead on spine headband.
I'll talk more about this headband - and why you might want to use it - once we get into the repetitive part of the
sewing. I want to get into actually sewing it as quickly as possible.
Now, I found this one really hard to video because of the fine thread.
So the first time I demonstrate it, I'm going to do it on a demonstration text block.
This poor text block's been used to practice about everything.
And I'm going to use a really thick thread and a piece of electrical wire as a core.
So you start at the inside of the text block, coming out to the spine.
Now, in a real book with wide shoulders, which I'll demonstrate later, I'll come out at the second section.
Then go back in through the text block, going back out through the same hole to form a loop, which is going to hold
the core in place at the top of the spine.
The thread with the needle is now the spine side.
And that's brought up and brought underneath the core and then wrapped over.
So now there's two wraps over the core, and now the thread without the needle is brought around - wrapped around - to
form the first bead, which then starts to stabilize the core.
The non-needle thread is now wrapped twice around the core, and then the needle thread forms a bead over that
and goes to the top of the book - we'll call that the front of the book.
With a real book, we would now look for a flag that indicates the center of a section that is close to where the
thread is. And we would do a tie down.
So push the needle back through the book, hopefully to just below the kettle stitch and tighten it up, which
will firm up the bead on the spine and hold everything firmly in place.
Now we're roughly back to the starting configuration.
So the thread with the needle goes up underneath the core and wraps twice.
And then the non-needle thread forms a bead over the needle thread.
The needle thread forms a bead over the non-needle thread and ends up at the front of the book, and we look for
another section to tie down through.
Like most headbands, it's quite unstable when you're starting out and there aren't many tie downs.
To help stabilize the core, you can do the trick of putting a pin through the core and into the shoulder.
And I'll do that when I demonstrate on a real book.
Once the needle thread is back to the spine side, then we're back to the start and we repeat the process.
So when and why would you use this headband.
In the Greenfield book, it says "The headband with the bead on the spine forms the primary sign of a great many medieval
and renaissance headbands.
It was usually sewn with unbleached, uncoloured thread on a core of tawed skin or vegetable fiber, which was laced into
a groove in wooden boards." It goes on to say that today it's used as a conservation headband, and it references
Chris Clarkson's Limp Vellum Binding book.
The book I'm going to demonstrate on isn't a medieval or renaissance binding, style binding.
However, it is a tight-back, flexibly sewn, book.
So raised bands.
So it has a bit of a flavor to it.
And I like this simple style of headband, and I thought it would look quite nice, a single colour.
And I wanted the headband to match the edge colour that I used.
It was actually inspired by a book that Arthur Green posted on Facebook.
To finish up, we'll wrap the needle thread around to the front.
Go back down through the center of a section.
Even the tension between the two threads, cut them off, and then glue them to the spine.
I'll make this headband on an actual book.
I'll start by going through and flagging the center of each section.
Now, I think I started from the outside sections, however, because this book has fairly wide shoulders.
I'll actually start and finish at the second sections.
Now, this is going to be a leather bound book and it's going to have a head cap that's going to roll over the
headbands. If the headband went all the way out to the edges of the shoulders, it would interfere
with the head cap - the head cap would squish the headband in.
So for this style of book with, bound in leather, with a head cap, then you want to start the headbands
more in line with the edges of the text block.
This is a fairly wide book, so I'm going to use quite a bit of thread, so I'm going to use about 4 feet of thread.
I'm not a big fan of trying to add thread in the middle of a headband, but if you have to, you have to.
Because I'm only tying down on one thread end, and that's the needle end, of course, when I pull the thread through
the second section - in this case - I will have most of the thread, about two thirds of it on the needle side
. Because it needs that extra thread to do the tie downs.
For a core, I'm just going to use some very firm cotton cord.
As mentioned earlier, traditionally, it was common to tie this on a rolled piece of
tawed skin. Well, I don't have any tawed skin.
I have tried doing it on rolled leather, and it's pretty tricky to do.
And that, I believe, is fairly common in modern conservation circles as well.
If someone wants to give me a lesson on how to do that, I'd be very grateful.
So once we get the core in place, it's a matter of following the same steps that I've already demonstrated.
I'm going to do two wraps with each thread, however, because it is a very fine thread in a fairly wide book.
I'm only going to tie down every second time on the needle thread.
This does mean it will be a while before the core becomes more stable.
And I did find it a little bit frustrating and decided to use the trick of putting a pin down through the core and
into the shoulder, just to stabilize the core a bit earlier in the process.
If you haven't come across the concept of a primary headband before, then I'll try and explain it.
In early books, it was fairly common to attach a cord like I'm doing here, using a primary headband
sewing technique.
This cord then can be laced into the boards, and then once the book is covered - often after it's covered - a
secondary headband can be sewn over the primary, which is often much more decorative.
And it also can go through the spine covering of the book.
A nice example in the book is the German braided endband, which it says was popular in the 15th and 16th centuries.
I've still got a lot to learn about this period of bookbinding.
We don't have a lot of 15th and 16th century books in Australia.
The book I'm working on here is a future series of videos.
There's a lot of editing involved in this project, so it's a ways off yet.
But I thought the end bands could stand alone as a video.
I'll be keeping my Patreons up to date on the status of this project.
If becoming one of my Patreons is something that you would like to do and you're able to do, that would be greatly
appreciated. And there's a link in the description below.
I'd have done myself a big favor if I had stabilized the core by putting a pin through it at this point, but I end up
waiting a few more wraps before I get frustrated with it and put the pin in place.
Once I do get the core more stable, the sewing goes fairly straightforward from that point on.
I did continue to video the complete process.
I changed angles and changed the level of zoom just because I thought it might be useful.
It's not great for my video performance on YouTube, but I think it's more important that you have the opportunity to
see this being done from different viewpoints.
I'll put some relaxing Bach on for you to listen to while I finish this headband, and then I'll come back to finish it
off.
Now we're almost done.
However, I'm going to have a dilemma in a moment.
I'm going to reach the point where I've tied down with the needle thread, but I'm not quite far enough over.
I could continue until the needle is to the front again.
But then I'm going to go too far.
So the solution is to swap the needle to the non-needle thread and just do one more wrap.
Once the two threads are back on the spine, I'll cut those off and glue them down.
I'll also put a bit of glue on the back of the headband just to connect it to the text block and stabilize it a
little bit more. You'll have noticed there was a little bit of a kink in the headband.
I'm not sure what caused that - it must mean some change in tension.
Tension is everything in in headbands.
I was able to straighten it out.
And with a bit of adhesive on the spine, it's going to be fine.
Once the adhesive is dry, I'll cut the cores off at the shoulders.
I cut those at an angle.
Unfortunately, I totally messed up the video work on this.
So that they slope down from the edge of the headband to the outside of the shoulder.
That's the single coloured bead on spine headband done for today.
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And until next time, cheerio.