Single Quire Notebook

The simplest little book form and how I’ve filled mine!

I started making books like this when I was a little kid. Maybe most of us have. I remember wrangling the pages into a stapler to make a quick book — like a Field Notes notebook. Can I roll one side up to make it fit? Open the stapler and slam it, then bend the two ends with my fingernails? Tape it?

At some point I started running them through my sewing machine for a quick straight line. There is no right way to make a single quire notebook.

Here are some of the ways!

Books Made By Kids - Me and My Boys!

• Circus Actors To: Mommy

This is the only and earliest little book of what I imagine is one of thousands I made when I was little.

This is the only single-quire book I have from childhood — I imagine there were thousands of them.

Circis Actors Agish 6

• Cereal Box Notebook with My Boys!

We were always making things — this was before they were officially homeschooled. We started them on early on messy things, sharp things, and handmade things!*

* 11 November, 2010: First knife experience, unintentional, but successful! From a journal I wrote to/for Søren that I have kept;)

2.5 year old Søren with a kitchen knife

• Søren’s Wonderstruck Pop Up

We were reading Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck at night, and by morning Søren would work on his Wonderstruck pop-up book. This is kind of a single quire taped. This book is reminiscent of my childhood work, but Søren was always years ahead of me. I love how the pages are each their own shape.

Bookbinding need never be perfect.

I found little scissored holes in the spine — I suspect he wanted to stitch this at some point but kept adding spreads!

Single Signature Notebooks 4. 5 in.

• Shimmera: 100 Day Project — A Poem a Day

• Video: How-to video: Bookbinding From Home No. 1
  Short: stitching with antique thread!

I have a lot of these little notebooks with poems from a 100 Day Project that I started to illustrate. This project remains unfinished and ever-growing.

Shimmera Notebooks

• Anna’s Oak

  I partook in a group show celebrating a fallen historic oak tree called Anna’s Oak. I used a little notebook to plan my little bug-shaped books, Tetra Pak print, and earrings I made to celebrate. They were all part of a tiny installation. I love adding scraps from the making to the books. Books within books. An everlasting story.
  

Recycle or Transform Things-You-Can’t-Throw-Away Notebooks

• Picture Camp online class: I went to Spain in 2016 for an in-person retreat. It was life-changing because it was an incredible experience, AND the Sendak Artist Roll emerged from it! The pandemic moved 2020’s incredible lineup to online, which was a bummer, but I felt really lucky to be able to attend. Beatrice Alemagna and Carson Ellis were two of the facilitators!
  

  I made a quick notebook for this last-minute class using 18 x 24 sheets of Strathmore drawing paper that I had drawn on and didn’t like. The pattern that floats throughout the book became a starting point for each page — using old stuff eliminates fear of the blank page!

Class Notebook

• Small Notebooks with Recycled/Reused Covers

• Video: Bookbinding at Home No. 1

• Food 52 Tutorial
  I shared this tutorial with Food 52 in 2016. I covered small notebooks with — used wrapping paper, packaging from a magazine sealed with wax, cards, and ink-stained paper!

  

  

  From Food 52 Tutorial

• Newsletter Sign-Up Notebook

  A handmade notebook is a charming and purposeful object to bring to in-person events!

Great Quick Mailing List Notebooks for In-Person Events

Little Ideas

• 5 Minutes of Quiet Observation

• Video: Simple Single Quire Book Stitched with Grass.

• Grass-stitched book: In an in-person workshop with dasha tolstikova . We were to spend 5 minutes outside, quietly, maybe with eyes closed, and return to the studio to make a drawing of it. The five minutes were magical! I lay in the grass and made a little book and stitched it with a blade of the grass. I loved this experience and must do more of this.
  

• Video:

Stitched with Grass!

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  A Project Within a Project

• Tetra Pak 100 Day Project with Folktale Week in the Middle

For when I am working on a project within a project or another version of a stuck thing. I make little single-quire notebooks. Here, an Instagram Tetra Pak Challenge in the middle of my Tetra Pak 100 Day Project!

• Picture Book

  Also, a fragmented alternative look at Everywhere Astonishments, a picture book I’ve been in and out of. Sometimes I stew over a thing for too long and force myself to resee it in a new shape.

Shape Books

• Some Things Must Be Contained

  These are more little ideas than projects. I’ve made a bunch of littles like this over the years but cannot find them. When I do, I’ll add them here!

Peg and Awl Notebooks

• Orra Notebooks

• In Our Shop: Large Portrait Orra, Landscape Orra, Portrait Orra

We started making these a bunch of years ago after Samantha Dion Baker and I talked about simple notebooks for her 30-Day journals for her ongoing Draw Your Day project. She wanted the large portrait size, and we made two others to fit into our Sendak Artist Rolls. Sam used a few of ours and has been making her own since!

Made with Strathmore drawing paper, Legion cover stock, handstitched.

• Morning and Evening Question Notebook

An old Peg and Awl project inspired by Ben Franklin’s daily journaling prompts. We put a drawing of his face that Silas drew on the back of the notebook!

Everywhere I look, I find another book. My studio is crawling with them.

If you are liking this, please let me know in the comments along with what you may like to see more of!

PS: I chose quire because I love the sound of it and found I’d written it in the Food 52 piece. This book can also be called a single signature, or pamphlet-stitched book, or saddle-stitched. Also, Notebook, Booklet, &c. I like quire. Single Quire.

Materials:
- Strathmore Drawing Paper 18 x 24 gives the following proportions when halved and halved and halved and…
- thread
- needle
- awl or thumbtack
- scissors

Materials video here! In this video, I share materials, bookbinding books, and some of the old journals I’ve made:)