… at least for a few hours.

So, just to sum up my last month: I started NaNoWriMo but had to give up 3 days later when I received the new assignment. Since then, I’ve been spending every free moment on this shite; a bit because it’s hard and a bit because I’m obsessive and can’t give up. Anyhow, just to give you an idea this assignment is the equivalent of giving crayons and blank paper to a child expecting them to draw a Van Gogh, but without giving any directions. Overall, it is a cool project and I’m learning a lot. The downside is that nothing I’m learning will be useful for the exam of this module as it’s way too advanced stuff.

Yay.

Anyway, I got up this morning feeling very stressed, so I forced myself to do something else and, since I received an Hobonichi Techo for my birthday, I needed a nice cover… or at least a cover.

It’s wonky as usual but it works fine! I might just start pretending this is actually a design choice…

Tutorial – Sort Of

1. Draw the shape of the journal – front, back and the spine- cut around adding about 1 cm around. 
2. Cut another piece of the same size, and two more pieces of the same height. For the width, measure half of the cover plus the allowance around.

   

3. 
4. Cut a stripe of fabric about 1 inch of a different fabric to make the bias, pin it to both flaps and top stitch. Bias can be bought already made, but as I’m trying to use only material already available in my hoarded stash of fabric. This is some polycotton leftover from a Goku costume I made for my lil’ bro ages ago.
5. Pin and sew the flaps. This can be done afterwards while sewing back and front together. Sew at about half a centimetre from the edge to leave enough room to turn it over and top stitch again. 
6. Cut a stripe of fabric at least 1 inch wide for the pen holder, fold in four and topstitch. The cut two pieces of the same length depending how wide you want it. It should fit one pen. Mine fits two because it was too long, so I sewed in in the middle and got a double pen holder!
7. Assembly. My most dreaded part. Actually, the most dreaded part is the turning over, but they are basically the same kind of evil. The theory would be to place the front of both pieces of fabric against each other, sew around leaving an opening to be able to turn it over, and tadah! The practice is that every time I’ve no idea how to do it. when at first I turned it, it looked like it didn’t work out, but then after I unsewed the top, it did. Mystery! Flatten and topstitch all around. Make sure to sew to make the cover a snug fit to the journal, this is why it is important to leave an allowance when cutting as the turning and topstitching will make it smaller. This was the result of a very intense Sunday thinking!

The whole project was very quick, about 2 hours overall -it’ll probably be faster if you know what you are doing…- and it could be a nice idea for some Xmas presents or to use up some leftover bits of fabric. Or some Xmas presents using some some leftover bits of fabric in the spirit of a upcycled, DIY, zero waste festive season.

Anyway, this is everything with this blog post that is vaguely reminiscent of a tutorial!