(More) Notebook Covers

I finally worked out a pattern for a notebook cover to my own liking. This entry is more about the experimenting on the way there ... If you want to see more about the actual pattern, click here.


The orange one is okay. I like the colors (and so did my husband who claimed it.) The batting is a little too thick. It's not quilted at all. The 'welt" for turning the outside in landed smack in the middle of the inside.



(This piece is actually square, even though it doesn't appear to be square in this photo.)

The purple and green one was an experiment in making my own fabric using the cut-off ends of fabric when squaring up for rotary cutting. The Wanda Hanson at Exuberant Color had the idea of laying these cast off strips out on a fusible batting, ironing them down, and stitching. Nice idea! The quilting made the batting not so puffy.

I got the turning idea from an Amish potholder purchased in Lancaster County, PA. No binding makes these quicker than a fancy edge finish. My satin stitching doesn't come out as nice as Sue Bleiweiss's work ... so I needed to come up with an alternative.

For the green and purple one, I moved the turning welt to be behind the notebook. That worked ok, but now I'm thinking about possibly making the turning welt run horizontally to make a wider pocket for the notebook cardboard ... Always thinking of ways to improve ...

Notebook Covers

The smaller one is a la Gill K. from Conversations in Cloth. 5-1/2 x 8 in pad. She gave everyone a little kit to make one at our Christmas Party a few weeks ago. This one flips up.
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This one is the Padfolio pattern from Sue Bleiweiss at Fibre & Stitch. It covers an 8-1/2 x 11 inch legal pad. I didn't do any thread-painting or embellishing as I was testing the basic pattern.

I needed a new notebook system for drafts of my blog post articles. The notebooks go with me everywhere, and I can write a draft when an idea presents itself. It's harder to schedule computer time at my house between a computer programmer husband and a gaming boy, so the notebooks house my ideas until I can get them posted.

I bought a few notebooks last summer when all the school supplies were on sale. But these notebooks seem to be so poorly constructed that they fall apart with minimal use. I can't imagine any of the students are putting up with this. I don't want a spiral notebook because I rip out the pages and recycle them after the post has been published. I don't like all the little bits of confetti that fall when pages are torn out of spiral-bound notebooks.

This solution provides a cloth cover for a plain old sturdy legal pad (or smaller). I can rip out pages and not worry about it falling apart. The design is tried and true.

I'm working on a similar design that would not require the satin stitching. This method uses a lot of thread. Stay tuned ....