Piano Hinges

Have you ever made a piano hinge book? They're very confusing. But they look pretty cool. Basically the very back of the signatures are slit, then the pieces are alternated forward and back and (traditionally) a skewer is fed through them to keep it in place. You can see this on the cover. The blue pieces are the cover, the orange in between is the signature behind it. It's extremely time consuming and difficult to get it to look tidy and bend properly.

This book was a custom order for a beach wedding. Luckily I had this terrific paper that matched her colour perfectly and has a gorgeous ripply water effect for the cover. The spine is made of watercolour paper with calligraphy of the couple's names in their second colour (orange).


Normally piano hinges have skewers to hold the whole thing together. Obviously this wouldn't work for a book that is actually meant to be used, not just displayed. So I used ribbon instead. I used a skewer to feed it through. I only had to restart once, which was an improvement from the first time I tried to do this!

The front cover has a window cut into it with calligraphy of the couple's name's and wedding date. When paper is wrapped around an inside window, of course, it doesn't quite cover the corners. So I added a band of the calligraphy paper. You might not be able to tell from the photo, but it's a little higher than the surrounding cover. The orange paper is attached under the cover, wraps around a small strip of binding board, and back under the cover. It was not nearly as difficult as I though it was going to be, and I think really makes the calligraphy stand out.

Hopefully this wasn't too confusing! Ask me if you want something clarified.