For my final book, I am hand making and binding because due to this being a personal project about my own identity, i wanted my final product to be hand made so that the aim of the human touch isn’t lost through mechanical printing. My chosen method of book binding is Japanese Stab binding in which you have an outer cover and the pages inside and you reveal the stitching on the outside, this creates a decorative spine yet functions like a normal book spine. For my book I am using red thread for binding to have a contrast to my soft grey cover and the images inside.
I want my book to be smaller than A5 because it feels more delicate and the reader would handle it with more care, like they would a broken person. In this draft book, it has 4 signatures sewn together that make up 32 pages. A signature is a sheet of paper with four or more pages and folded one or more times to the approximate size of one page and in a manner which puts the pages in proper numbered order. I then sewed together using a Coptic stitch then glued the spine together to create a solid spine. In then added the grey card cover and made 2 evenly spread holes to begin stab binding. Stab binding consists of going back over yourself to create a linear pattern similar to a blanket stitch. I then covered my stab binding in a linen to create a sturdy spine that wouldn’t allow the stitching to move. For my final book, i am having the linen underneath the stitching so that you can see the red stab binding against the white and grey.
Example of Coptic Stitch 
Japanese Stab binding 
How to stab bind
This shows the bottom view of the book and how the looped over red thread is still visible through the linen, and how the signatures are put together. In this draft I could’ve pushed my signatures more into the grey cover but due to my stab binding being further down, there is a gap between the pages and the cover.