Coptic Bookbinding with Mary

I learned how to do chain stitch bookbinding in college. It is a cool way of making a book with braid-like stitching across an exposed spine. You use four needles at a time! My sister Mary, very crafty, wanted a refresher course on the technique. So we spent an afternoon making books, pictures of her work-in-progress follow. This technique is often called Coptic Bookbinding after the Egyptian Copts, and a there's a similar stitch called Ethiopian chain stitch. I think both were used to bind early Christian texts; for more history see:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_binding

http://www.bookbindingteam.com/2007/10/chain-stitch.html

cool cover