Last weekend, I completed the final page—number 20—of the 100 Day Stitch Book 2025, a 100 day stitch challenge with Ann Wood. The next step was to use the slot-and-tab binding method to put the stitched pages into book form.
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| Twenty hand stitched pages for the 100 Day Stitched Book 2025. |
Pagination for the Slot and Tab binding method
As someone who studied printing technology, publishing, and bookmaking, I quickly noticed the slot-and-tab binding method does not follow the standard page imposition like traditional book signatures. The number of pages does need to be a multiple of four, but the 4-page folios do not follow the traditional pagination scheme. Slot and Tab binding… a new bookmaking method for me to learn! Ann provides a pagination guide for the Stitch Book challenge on her blog.
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| Individual pages for the Stitch Book 2025 with the pagination guide. |
For the pagination, I considered keeping the pages in the date order of when they were created. But upon laying out and examining all the pages together, several of them lent themselves to cohesive 2-page spreads—which I found more appealing.
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| Determining page spreads. |
As recommended by Ann, I used painter’s tape to number each page as it would appear in the book sequence.
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| Labeling the book pages. |
Adding a cover to my stitch book required a new folding dummy
I also wanted a cover for my book. I had large scrap of a cotton/linen fabric (white fabric with blue rings shown below) from this Berwick Street shirt that I made. It was large enough to cut out covers for the Stitch Book. The covers were cut about 1” wider to accommodate the book’s spine and to make sure the inside pages of the book were covered when the book was closed.
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| White and blue cotton/linen fabric cover for the stitch book. |
With the addition of four more pages—the front and back outside covers, and the inside front and inside back covers—the pagination scheme needed to be updated (my book has 24 pages instead of 20). I made a classic folding dummy (with paper) to determine the page sequence and accommodate the extra four pages.
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| Using the paper folding dummy to determine the slot-and-tab folios. |
Sewing the slot and tab folios
Following Ann’s instructions and using her page template, the pages were sewn into either a slot or tab format.
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| Sewing the four-page tab and slot folios. |
The next steps are turning the signatures right side out and assembling the book. Stay tuned for more Stitch Book assembly.
