Fabric Covered Notebooks

The other night I was jumping from blog to blog and somehow ended up at this blog: Wise Craft tutorial of fabric covered moleskines.

I had been planning on making some quilted covers for composition notebooks having seen this Quarterly Challenge from American Patchwork and Quilting to make a journal cover. I had even suggested to my daughter that we make some journal covers for some of her friends for their birthdays.

So when I saw the fabric covered moleskines tutorial, I instantly decided to try it (even though I don't like to iron). I didn't know what a moleskine was (I do now after seeing the link from the tutorial), but it looked like a composition notebook so I used the same idea with my composition notebooks. I knew it would be a lot faster than making a cover so next thing I knew --


I had six made. I made them in sets of two because I found that 1/3 yard of fabric would make two. Also the double-sided fusible webbing I had was Steam-a-Seam lite. It just happened to be 12" wide. I cut that about 18" long which was enough to go around the composition notebook with an inch or two to spare so I didn't have to line everything up exactly.

Then I ran down to the store to pick up more composition notebooks while they are on the "Back to School" sale for fifty cents. I bought 19 of them. It filled up a box that was there. With a project this easy, I really can do it with my kids for friend birthday presents.

When I got home, I let my oldest pick out some fabric since one of her friends had a birthday last week and another in a couple weeks. This is what we ended up with:



The purple ones are for her friends, the crocodiles are for her and her brother. (There's one brother and lots of little sisters who would like the flowers and polka dots that I had already made. The tan and blue "Halfway Cafe" fabric by Cosmo Cricket is mine. It is my lastest favorite fabric.) Oh--the light blue notebook with flowers was light enough that the notebook showed through a little. My little girl just said that was where she could put her name. So I took a Sharpie and wrote her name on it, and she was happy.

Is this project as easy as it sounds? YES!!!

To make the composition notebook version of the fabric covered moleskines here's what you need (for two notebooks):

Materials:

1. 1/3 yard of fun fabric
2. 2 composition notebooks
3. 1 yard of double-sided fusible webbing that is 12" wide (maybe less if your webbing is a different width)
4. Scissors and an iron

Instructions:

1. Read the fabric covered moleskines tutorial.
2. Cut fusible webbing into two rectangles each 12" x 18" wide (this is generous so if you are a little smaller it's okay).
3. Fuse both rectangles of webbing onto the wrong side of your fabric. Cut fabric a little bigger than the webbing rectangles. Peel paper backing off the fusible webbing.
4. Lay fabric down with webbing up. Place composition notebook on the fabric. Smooth fabric over the notebook. The nice thing about the Steam-a-Seam webbing is that it was tacky. Other webbings may be like this as well, I don't know. Because it was tacky, I pressed it onto the notebook, reposition, smooth, so the fabric looked just right.
5. Because the fabric was tacky, I trimmed the fabric at this point. That is different than the tutorial.
6. Press.

So much fun! I think it took about half an hour to make six. It was so slick. I loved seeing how each fabric transformed the notebook.