This tutorial for DIY stab-bound nature journals is brought to you by Craft Project Ideas, who provided the major consumable materials for this project — and are sponsoring a giveaway of the same materials to one of you!

What is a Stab-Bound Book?

Stab binding is a traditional form of bookbinding without a covered spine.  We’re going to be using the most simple form of stitching here, but if you decide you really love it, there are fancier stitching styles you can expand to.

Normally, we’d use pages and covers that are exactly the same size, and holes that are evenly spaced down the spine, but we’re going to do some thing slightly less perfectly for the sake of keeping the project simple for kids.  I’ll point those out as we go along so if you’d rather go to the extra trouble to be a bit more traditional, you can do that.

The foam covers on the particular books we’re going make are great because they’re flexible, so you can roll one up and tuck it in your pocket to carry on a nature walk.

Materials Needed for DIY Stab-Bound Nature Journal

• precut craft foam sheets, without adhesive backing (ours are 4×6)
• friendship bracelet thread
• paper (just regular printer paper, 8.5×11)
• decorations as desired (we used glitter glue, which is good for nature journals because there aren’t any small pieces that could fall off and choke a lizard or something)

Supplies Needed for DIY Stab-Bound Nature Journal

• pen or pencil
• ruler
• scissors
• needle (a large blunt needle is perfect for stitching)
• something to punch the holes (a large sharp needle, awl, or drill with a very small bit)
• (opt.) large binder clips
• (opt.) paper trimmer

Getting Started: Preparing Your Materials

For each book, you’re going to need two cover pieces (foam), a stack of pages (all with the necessary holes), and Thread for sewing.

If you’re going to be doing this with a large group, I strongly recommend a guillotine-style paper cutter and a drill with a small bit.  If you’re just doing a few, scissors and an awl or, at worst, a strong needle, will suffice.

1. The first step is to trim your paper.

Cutting printer paper into fourths is almost perfect, but it leaves the paper a little wide.

So we need to trim it down a little.  Trim 1/2″ off the long edge of a full sheet to make it 8×11.  Then cut it in half both ways, so you end up with pieces 4 inches by 5.5 inches.  You can make as many or as few pages as you want.  (Fewer are easier to sew, so keep that in mind if your crafters are very young.)

2. Measure and mark the holes.

We need four holes along the spine of the book.  This edge is 6 inches long, and we divide by 5 to see where to place the holes.  (That’s a little counter-intuitive.  It’s because the holes actually go in between 5 spaces.  You can see that if you look at the images of the finished books.)

This is where we’re going to fudge it a little.  Ideally, we’d mark the holes 1.2 inches apart.  That would space them evenly.  But 1.2 inches is an awkward thing to mark with a typical ruler.  So we’re going to make it 1.25 for ease of ruler use, and it will just leave our middle space smaller than the others.

Mark your holes 1.25 inches up from the bottom and 1.25 up from that, and then start again from the other end, and go down 1.25 and 1.25.  These holes should be half an inch in from the edge.

Now remember the paper is a little shorter than the covers (this is the other thing we’re fudging a bit), so you’ll want to center it on the covers and then mark the holes to match the cover.  (I actually prefer to poke the holes in the cover first, and then line up the paper underneath and poke my pen or pencil through the holes to mark the paper.)

3. Poke holes through all these parts.

The large needles work pretty well to punch holes through the foam sheets.  They don’t work so nicely on the paper.  (We made them work, but squished our paper up quite a bit in the process.)

The easiest way is to stack up your paper, hold it in place with binder clips, and just drill the holes with a drill.  If you don’t have a drill, you can also try an awl and hammer.

(I seem to have angled my drill a little crooked and these aren’t as even as they should be.  Don’t be like me.)

4. Cut a length of thread.

Choose your thread, and cut a length about four times as long as the long edge of the book.  (That would be about 24 inches here, but I didn’t measure the thread with a ruler; I just stretched it out along the covers four times.)

Now you have all the pieces you need — two punched covers, a stack of punched pages, and a length of thread for stitching.

Stack the covers and pages in their proper order, thread the thread onto a blunt needle, and you’re ready to assemble your book.

Assembling the Book

Assembling the book itself is all about the stitches.  They aren’t difficult, but they have to be done in a certain order, so follow along with the images below.  I prefer to turn my book sideways so the stitched edge is (temporarily) the top, because it makes more sense to me for manipulating the stitches, so that’s the way the images are done.

5. If the holes are numbered from left to right, pull your needle and thread up (from back to front) through hole #2.

Pull the thread almost all the way through, but be sure to leave a “tail” of a few inches on the back so it doesn’t pull all the way out.

6. Take the thread over the spine and bring it back up again through the same hole.

I’m leaving some of these a little loose in the photos so you can see what I’m doing, but pull each stitch snug before moving on to the next.  I like to hold the tail on the back down with my fingers while I go (at least until I get a few stitches in) to ensure it won’t pull all the way out by accident.

7. Take the thread down (front to back) through hole #1.

8. Bring the thread over the spine and back down through hole #1.

9. Come around the end of the book and go back down through hole #1.

10. Come back up hole #2.

11. Go down through hole #3.

Now we’re kind of going to “skip past” this third hole temporarily…

12.  Come back up through hole #4.

13. Go around the spine and come back up through hole #4.

14. Go around the end of the book and come back up through hole #4 again.

…and now we return to #3…

15. Go back down through hole #3.

16. Bring the thread around the spine and go back down through hole #3 one final time.

17. Flip the book over. 

You’ll see one final gap left in the stitching.

18. (Remove your needle and) knot the ends of the thread together.  

Trim.

Decorate the Cover

Of course you could leave the finished book as-is, blank.  But it’s more fun to decorate it.  You can glue on rhinestones, use foam stickers, or whatever you like.  But if you’re going to use it as a nature journal, drawing with glitter glue is a great option, because there aren’t any small pieces that could potentially fall off and create a hazard for wildlife.

Who Can Do It?

I’m the one who stitched the book for the step-by-step tutorial, so you might be wondering whether this is really a kid-friendly tutorial.  My 9-year-old and 7-year-old both made books of their own.

The 9-year-old only needed me to talk her through the steps (since we didn’t have handy photos yet) — and a little encouragement to make sure her needle wasn’t being pushed through the thread when going back through the same hole.  (The pink book above is hers, from start to finish.)  The 7-year-old required slightly more assistance, especially making sure the thread wrapped around the end of the book when it should, but he largely stitched his own, too.

This is actually a great opportunity for stitching practice, since the holes are already there and the large, blunt needle is easier to maneuver than a typical sewing needle and less prone to poke fingers.

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