Pamphlet Tutorial

Thanks to all who have followed iPhone in the Vault. Today we invite you to make a beautiful book of your own, a pamphlet, using an easy technique seen in our 18th & 19th century pamphlets. If you make one, please consider posting a photo and tagging @tischlibrary

With a few minutes of cutting & folding, plus a few stitches, you can make a notebook to write, draw, doodle; to record the best quotes from your reading, or your impressions of this peculiar year.

“Books win in the end." - Franco Maria Ricci (1937-2020)

Materials: an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, or a few sheets of smaller letter stationery; a piece of fancy paper, such as from Papersource in Porter Square, light cardstock, or grocery bag paper (the vegan counterpart to a parchment cover); needle and thread, or a stapler; letter opener or a dull knife; pencil, ruler, scissors; bone folder, or the barrel of a pen, to make sharp folds.

1. More paper than you need, in order to show different possibilities.

2. The directions.

3-9. You don’t even need to know how to sew on a button to do this. Multiplied by a dozen or more, this is how books were bound by hand, for centuries (but at that scale, more complicated than sewing a button).

10. Voila. You have made a sewn pamphlet.