A New Book for the New Year

Hello sewing friends!

I hope the new year has been good to you so far...

I've been rather busy, and as usual I have a book to help me keep track of appointments. What's more I use it to pen in resolutions (lots of fabric activities planned!) and various notes. This year I decided to do away with the normal corporate diaries that I usually carry around with me, and made my own little notebook. There's nothing really extraordinary about this little book, it's all in the 'dressing'.

So take 1 ordinary hard cover notebook. I chose a fairly thick one, to allow for plenty of pages for notes, sketches and ideas.

Before I go on, please note that this is not a detailed tutorial, but there're plenty of pictures and information for you to get the idea if you decide to make one too.

For the cover, I pieced together 8 leftover charms that I had lying around. These are from Moda's Blush and Authentic line. Sew them together into 2 rows of 5 charms. For my book cover, the first and last charms were cut in half to make two 2 1/2 x 5 inch rectangles.

Now take your notebook and lay the cover flat onto the pieced cover. Fold and mark where you want the inside (front and back) flaps to be.

I wanted a pocket to slot in my bits, so I used an extra charm and stitched it onto the front inside flap.

With right sides facing, stitch along the top and bottom, over the inside front and back flaps. Like so:-

 Turn inside out, press and slip in the covers of the notebook, and admire!

For this book I also added a ribbon marker and a pen holder, which is basically a small loop of cloth stitched onto the cover.

I've been using this notebook this past week, and can't help admiring it every so often :-) 

And the best bit about it is I can always make a new cover (or maybe several?) and give it an instant makeover, hu hu!

Hope you have a happy week ahead! Don't forget to throw in some of the ingredients from the Special Recipe into your day now and then :-)