Homemade Journals

I love love love new journals.  I'm not always so good at keeping up a journal but I really enjoy picking out a new blank book, imagining all the intelligent and insightful things I will write in it, and then eventually throwing it in a drawer to be forgotten.  So finding a more affordable way to fuel this habit is a good thing for me.  Or perhaps an enabling thing for me.  I'm still on the fence on this one.

Hence, fabric-covering composition books.  The blue one pictured is actually not for me, but was a Father's Day gift for my husband to work on the recipes that he's constantly revising.  No more pieces of paper stuffed in a binder, but a place to gather all those notes together.  Mark's a really good cook, the kind that can cook on the fly.  He's been working on a few signature dishes for a while now and every time he makes them, its never the same experiences, as he's always fine-tuning his recipes.  I hand stitched the cover fabric in a simplified version of Japanese sashiko, a technique I will talk more about soon.

But here's the basics on how to add some personal style to your own notebooks.

How to Fabric Cover a Notebook:
Supplies:
1 Composition book or non-spiral-bound notebook
1 piece of fabric of desired pattern for outside
1 piece of coordinating fabric for binding and inside
iron-on adhesive, such as Heat n' Bond
Scissors
Pencil
Tailor's chalk or washable fabric pen
Ruler


1. Cut outer fabric into two pieces.  The measurements should be the width by height of the notebook cover plus 1".  Ex. for a 7"x9" notebook, you want two 7"x10" pieces.

2.  Cut binding fabric.  The measurements should be 3" by the height of the notebook plus 1".  Ex. for 7"x9" notebook, you need 3"x10". 

3.  Cut inside cover fabric into two pieces.  The measurement should be the width and height of the notebook.  Ex. 7"x9".

4.  Cut adhesive to the size of all fabric pieces.

5.  Iron on adhesive to the back of all fabric pieces, webbing facing the fabric. Remove paper from fabric pieces.

6. Center cover piece on front cover with 1/2" overhanging top, bottom and the side that opens the book.  Leave space for the binding, using the already existing binding as a guide.  Iron onto cover, careful not to heat the overhang.  Open notebook.  Fold top and bottom of overhang onto inside cover.  Iron.  As if you were folding a package, angle edges of the side overhang, fold over the remaining, and iron to adhere.  Repeat with back cover.

7.  For binding, slightly fold over the long edges to create a faux-hem, about 1/4".  Iron carefully, making sure not to set the rest of the fabric.  Open the notebook and center on the binding with 1/2" overhanging top and bottom.  Iron.  Cut slits at the mid point of the overhang.  Open to the inside cover, fold the flaps over, and iron.  Repeat on back inside cover.

8.  Center inside cover pieces and iron to adhere.  If the inside fabric is a lot lighter than the outside fabric, you can first glue thin poster board, cut to the cover size, to the inside of the notebook so that the extra overhang won't show through.  Then attach the fabric over the poster board.