Stumbled on a museum exhibit in Portland that fixed my stitching technique

I was at the Japanese American Museum last month and saw this old book binding from the 1800s where the spine stitching used alternating thread colors to catch tension errors. Has anyone else found random artifacts that totally changed how they sew signatures?

2 comments

2 Comments

jade_hernandez1mo ago

The 3rd stitch on the 2nd signature is where it all falls apart for me... maybe Portland's museum has the answer. Honestly I find old book repair tricks way more useful than any YouTube tutorial, they just don't make stuff like they used to. But then again I'm the kind of person who got excited over a 1950s sewing manual at the thrift store last week. So maybe I'm just easily impressed by anything with yellowed pages and tiny diagrams.

tessacarter1mo ago

Oh come on, I gotta push back on this one. @jade_hernandez old book repair tricks are fine and all, but acting like they're better than YouTube tutorials is a reach. I tried that exact 1800s alternating thread trick from a museum demo in Chicago and ended up with a mess that looked like I let a toddler sew a pillow. Modern binding thread is actually way more reliable than the stuff they used back then anyway. Plus those old manuals skip over obvious stuff like how to keep your tension even when you're working with a curved needle. I'll take a good slow motion video over a yellowed diagram any day, lol.