Tutorial: Love Book

(I have an appt tomorrow, so have to publish the tutorial today, and might not be around to blog tomorrow...)

Above is what I gave Buzz for Valentine's day - it's 3 pages (front and back) long with front and back covers. Inside I listed a whole bunch of reasons why I love him. I told him he had better cry when he got it because it took forever to make! Part of that forever was because the design I started out with ended up being impossible so I had to figure out an alternative. Which was also an excuse to buy those crazy pliers that look like torture devices but actually make eyelets.

If you decide you'd like to tell someone special just why you're so into them, here's a little tutorial:

Ok, I basically made this as though it were quilt blocks, then sewed them together. Thus, everything is in inches and the Seam Allowance (SA) is 1/4" Decide how many pages you want, and you'll need 2 pages for each - in other words, each page is two pages sewn together. So mine is 3 pages long, giving me 6 pages for writing. Each finished page is 8" by 10".

materials needed:
eyelet maker and a small bit of ribbon
strips of fabric to frame each page (I used scraps)
one 10.5" by 8.5" printed fabric for the back cover
about 3/4m/yd of woven interfacing
Heavy Sew In interfacing if you can spare some, you'll need 2 x 10.5" by 8.5"
about 1/2yd/m of calico (because it's sturdy and cheap!)
permanent fabric pen  - I found a fabric gel-roller pen on amazon.co.uk

Ok, for each side of a page, you need:
1 x calico, 5.5" by 7.5"
2 x strips (patterned) fabric, 10.5" by 2" (you can cut them a little long and trim later for a perfect line)
2 x strips (patterned) fabric, 5.5" by 2" (you could do the same as above, but I didn't and it was fine)
Now, you need to iron on your woven interfacing. **Don't skip the interfacing - it gives it stability and durability! Otherwise you have a floppy baby book!***

These are your framing strips

These are 7.5" x 5.5" pieces of calico

I used different prints for each side of the page. Also, you need to make one for your front cover, so cut that out as if it were a page:

See, it's just like a page!

1. Attach top and bottom: Line up the 5.5" x 2" pieces on the top and bottom of your calico piece, RST, and sew using a 1/4" SA.  If you have more than one (I had 7), you can chain piece them by just sewing them one after the other without stopping Here's a tutorial if you're totally confused!:

Ok, once you've got that done, iron like crazy, with the seams pointing toward the calico:

2. Optional Step Ahead!:
I chose to have lines on my pages (in brown, because black looked too severe), because I know I can't write perfectly. So I stitched them. Using the top fabric as my starting point, I marked (with a disappearing fabric pen) lines at 1cm increments.  1/2" seemed too big.  So, you can do whatever you want - lines, no lines, spaced out lines, etc.  The 1 cm lines took a long time to do, but they look really cool, and I sped it up by not cutting the thread after I got done with one line.  I just raised the presser foot, pulled a little bit of thread, then lined up the next line.  The picture makes more sense:

3. Next, line up the sides and sew (NB: I cut my side pieces a little long and trimmed them afterwards.):

4. Trim if necessary. This is what you should have:

5. Now, take two pages, Right Sides Together, and sew a 1/4" seam all around, leaving a small opening at the bottom to turn it out:

6. Now, iron the opening open so it's straight and lined up:

7. Then turn it out, pushing the corners out:

8. Now, you're going to need to topstitch around the entire page. To do this in a way that blends, you need to put the relevant bobbin thread in and the top thread has to match the top fabric:

If you want to, you can just slipstitch the opening and not worry about topstitching. I really like the look of it, so that's what I did.
When you're done with all the pages, you have this:

Pages done! On to covers!
9. For front cover, you'll need your extra page (again, lines are optional). Now's the time to embellish it! I did a small patchwork heart. Now all you have to do is sew it RST with a 10.5" x 8.5" piece of calico and a piece of heavy sew-in interfacing to make it heftier than the pages, and follow steps 5 through 8.  Do the same for your back cover, too.

The top 3 pieces are for the front cover and the bottom 3 are for the back cover.

Almost finished! Now all you have to do is choose where you want your eyelets to be, carefully install them, and thread ribbon through them!:

And that's it! Now you get to write your message:

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