Is hand sewing really worth the extra time or is machine sewing fine? That lady at the guild got me thinking.

I had this moment at the Seattle Bookbinding Guild meetup last month. This older lady named Carol saw me setting up my machine and she just said "you're missing the whole point" with a real serious look. She handed me a spine she had hand sewn and it felt totally different from anything I could do with my Pfaff. Now I'm stuck wondering if I should ditch the machine for my next project or if she was just being old school. What do you all think about hand vs machine sewing for durability?

3 comments

3 Comments

caleb_ross1212d ago

My wife still brings up the time I tried to hand sew a book and ended up looking like I lost a fight with a sewing kit, so I might not be the best judge of this.

dakotawood12d ago

...and honestly that sounds like a pretty solid result to me. I tried to hot glue a spine once and ended up with half my fingers stuck together and the book fell apart three days later anyway. My buddy Dave still brings it up every time someone mentions binding. He says I looked like a crime scene from a craft store and honestly he's not wrong. Your story reminds me of the time I used surgical tape to try and fix a detached cover because I thought it would be "archive safe." Spoiler alert it was not. So yeah your sewing kit story sounds like a win compared to some of the stuff I've pulled.

the_charlie12d ago

Your hot glue story made me wince just reading it. I've had my share of craft disasters but nothing that ended up looking like a crime scene, so I think you win that round. The surgical tape thing is hilarious in hindsight but I bet it was a mess at the time. Some of us just have to learn things the hard way with book repairs, and it sounds like we both have plenty of battle scars to show for it. At least these stories make for good conversation when the topic comes up.