My friend, Ginny of Darling Adventures, created this awesome video tutorial for creating a notebook cover for those plain old composition notebooks we used way back in gradeschool. I thought the idea was genius! Now, you can buy those cheap composition books and make them pretty with removable covers. That is so much easier on the pocketbook than buying expensive, fancy journals all the time.
I love keeping notebooks to store all my crafty ideas and was so excited to give this project a try. I even added my own spin to it by adding some colorful embroidery to the fabric before I sewed it together.
If you love this project as much as I do, be sure to join in on the sew-along Ginny is hosting! It will be so fun to see the notebook covers that everyone comes up with.
Want the details on how I decorated my notebook cover??
HERE’S THE HOW TO:
1. Choose a bright fun fabric and coordinating embroidery threads.
2. On the wrong side of the fabric, draw lines with a fabric safe disappearing ink marker and a ruler. You’ll use these as a guide to keep your lines straight when you are stitching your embroidery. I used simple straight lines to contrast the busy floral fabric.
3. Next, stitch along the lines you drew alternating the colors of the embroidery thread you use on each row. I didn’t worry about making the stitches the same length. I think the uneven stitches add more character to the cover.
4. Also, don’t worry about all the little ends of the embroidery thread that you are left with, because they get neatly tucked in when you sew up the edges of the notebook cover. Once you’ve finished the embroidery, be sure to press the fabric, because the fresh embroidery stitches tend to pull on the fabric causing it to pucker a little bit.
5. All that is left is to sew the notebook together using the clever video tutorial over at Darling Adventures. Ginny is a natural teacher and really makes this project simple. In the end, this is what my journal cover looks like:
Project Details:
Pattern: Journal Cover video tutorial at Darling Adventures
Fabric: Waverly Tuileries Garden Watermelon
Time: This project is much simpler than it looks, and it came together much quicker than I was expecting it to. Gotta love that!
Skills: Sewing curved corners, adding embellishments, creating pockets
Difficulty: Easy breezy! Ginny breaks it down and makes it simple in her tutorial.
——————————–
So, I’ve showed you how I decorated my notebook. How will you decorate yours?
Be sure to join in on the fun by participating in Ginny’s sew-along over at Darling Adventures. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!