Recover Used Books–Part 3

Just a reminder–Today, Saturday is Friday.  (I explained what I mean Thursday of last week.)

Today, I’ll show you how to make the leather cover for your book.  It looks like I will have 4 parts to this instructional set, after all.  Next time we should be able to glue the cover onto the press-board/paperback book we prepped with the instructions from the first two posts in this set.

First, make a stencil.  I like to print mine out from the computer, tape it to the leather, and then cut it out.  You can trace it if you like, though.  For Treasure Island, I decided to use a skull-and-crossbones stencil.  (Pictured above and below)

(Just so you know, the black leather came from a shoulder bag–no, not a purse–I took apart for spare parts when it broke on me.)

Once I had it taped to the leather, I cut it out. (I used an Exact-o knife to get the small pieces between teeth, the eye sockets and nose–whatever the nose equivalent is for eye sockets.)

I pulled the stencil off, and used a small amount of glue (in this case it was Liquid Nails) to hold the piece in place while I sewed it onto the cover leather.  I did this for several reasons.  For one, there were some very narrow parts to the stencil that I figured wouldn’t hold up to much finagling.  For two, I wanted it in a very specific place–so, once I got it into position, I didn’t want to have to redo everything when it moved a centimeter or so.  The reason I didn’t just glue it and call it good was that I like the style a little stitched leather gives the cover.

 Once the glue dried, I started stitching, from the back, and left a tail, so that when I glued the stitching would just become part of the cover.  (If I had knotted the thread, it would have made undesirable lumps in the cover.)

After I finished stitching, I had what you see here.  Good luck, and see you Monday for our finale!