On a quiet, narrow road in Chiang Mai’s Old City stands a modest one–story building. Through the front windows, rows of books and loose sheets of paper stretch across the walls. A black metal press anchors the room; spools of thread wait in stillness for the next stitch. Above the doorway, faded brass letters spell out: Dibdee Binder.

Inside, Aeaw greets us with a beaming smile and a calm presence that mirrors the space itself—measured, deliberate, unhurried. Around her, stacks of notebooks sit in neat arrangements, each one bound by hand. Some covers are lined with paper marbled in soft swirls, others stitched with bright thread. Every detail carries her touch—the careful patience of a maker who has spent a long time learning what it means to hold things together.

Aeaw’s earliest encounters with craft unfolded in her family home. Both of her parents were teachers, and she grew up surrounded by the steady hum of a mimeograph machine, its inked sheets drying in neat piles. Sorting, pressing, and compiling pages became a rhythm of childhood—domestic rituals that quietly shaped her love for paper. Her father, inventive and playful, nurtured her curiosity. Together they designed school projects that unfolded like puzzles, three–dimensional constructions that surprised and delighted, even when they had little to do with the assignment itself.

Now, at sixty–nine, her father still comes to the workshop each day, sitting beside her to stitch books. What began as a household routine has become a shared craft, binding generations together through thread, paper, and time.

When we first saw Dibdee’s intricate bookbinding, we were struck by how much of it echoed our own textile practice. Geometry, repetition, lines folding and unfolding into rhythm — there was an undercurrent of kinship, a resonance that went beyond aesthetics.

For Aeaw, binding is more than assembly—it is a kind of storytelling. Trained as an architect, she brings that discipline into her craft. “Architecture taught me to think in three dimensions,” she explains, “how to assemble components, how to make something durable. Bookbinding feels similar—it’s about structure, sequence, and function.”

Like us, Aeaw often sketches her patterns first, then translates them into thread, letting the act of stitching become a form of meditation. During her university years, she even sold her notebooks to fund her travels—journeys that, in turn, broadened her eye for pattern, material, and place. Each book was both a vessel for ideas and a passport to new ways of seeing.

At Slowstitch, textiles emerge through a similar rhythm—cloth dyed by hand, patterned through repetition, and stitched into being. In their meeting, notebook and textile reveal a shared devotion to touch, detail, and time.

That language is also one of memory. In our dyed textiles each fold and line of thread is not only a technical step but a meditation that shapes how the cloth will later reveal its pattern. Like bookbinding, it requires restraint and patience – stitch by stitch, fold by fold – before the moment of unveiling. Even when the threads are removed, their traces remain, a quiet record of the hand’s passage through cloth. In this way, both practices remind us that making is also remembering: each fold, each knot, each impression a mark of time and touch.

Angles, lines, and shapes in repetition—blending in and out of rhythm—are at the heart of our textile practice. Patterns fascinate us, drawing us in deeper with each viewing. To let them speak, we often choose simple forms, where the cloth itself becomes the focus. Yet new forms are not always easy to find. Collaborations with artisans like Aeaw open these doors, expanding our world and allowing the textiles to take on new lives and meanings.

The notebooks born from this collaboration are quiet companions. Cloth and paper, each with its own story, are bound together into a new form. The textile, hand-dyed and patterned through Slowstitch’s processes, layers the cover with the silent presence of memory and the potential it holds. Inside, Dibdee’s stitching holds each page in place with patient precision.

They are objects made to be touched—designed to be opened, carried, and filled. Yet their beauty lies not only in what they are, but in what they invite. A notebook waits for its owner: to be written into, drawn upon, or simply cherished for the weight and promise it carries.

Notebooks, in that sense, carry a quiet duality. They are at once functional and poetic—spaces to sketch patterns or record fleeting thoughts, but also objects that hold the presence of hand and material. Through the binding of Dibdee and the textiles of Slowstitch, each notebook gathers two languages of craft into one form.

Collaboration is often spoken of as exchange, but here it feels more like resonance. Dibdee and Slowstitch are two practices shaped by memory, repetition, and handwork, finding common ground in the language of craft. Paper and cloth may serve different functions, yet in these notebooks they coexist, balanced and interwoven.

What remains is more than a product. It is an offering—an object that holds within it the patience of stitching, the patterns of memory, and the quiet persistence of hands at work. Each notebook is a vessel, waiting to carry the marks of another life, another story, another memory made.