Bookbinding Hats

Bookbinding is an old craft with a very current crowd. The Guild of Book Workers was founded on 14 November 1906 by 42 people at Emily Preston's bindery and now counts over 900 members. The newest wave is fanbinding, readers turning fan fiction into physical books, which a 2022 paper in Transformative Works and Cultures examined as a way to preserve fan work for the long term. The Renegade Bindery Discord grew from about 20 members in June 2020 to roughly 2,900 by February 2024, and its Binderary event is a month-long February challenge, where one member made 60 books in a month. The r/bookbinding community is listed at about 121,000 members. These bookbinding hats are for the maker, not only the reader. BOOKBINDER and BOOKBINDING are the plain badges. The rest carry the bindery's creed: sewn over glued, grain running parallel to the spine, a hardcover for every fic worth keeping, and an old bindery joke about which leather you would like it bound in. JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER I BOUND IT and I BIND FANFIC IN HARDCOVER each come in a second colorway. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one at the bench with the bone folder, or give one to the friend who keeps turning favorite stories into books.