 Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Sewing 101. Now, this time we're going to do a little bit more complicated project, but no, don't freak out. It's really not as complicated as you think it's going to be. I'm going to show you the sample first and then we're going to make one, okay? So just take a deep breath. Hopefully you've been studying your machine, whatever brand that you have, and you've been looking at your owner's manual. You should never have it be too far from you. Mine is always inside the lid of my machine, so it's always not too far from me. There's always things in here that I don't use often enough to memorize how to do on the machine, and this one is complicated. It has lots of different stitches, so I always have this handy. And if nothing else, if I get stuck with something, there is a troubleshooting guide in the back. If I run into a problem and I'm not sure how to fix it, so this is always handy. So hopefully you've been studying it. You know how to use your bobbin. You know how to thread your machine. You're pretty clear and you've been practicing straight stitches, yeah? And before you start any project, you should take some scraps of fabric. This is the fabric we're using today. I changed out my thread to be a color that matches the fabric, so you can't really, I don't even think you're I don't know if you're going to be able to even see that on camera, because I didn't want it to be real obvious. And I sewed with that thread on the fabric to make sure that my tension was correct, and that I wasn't going to have any lumps or bumps or knots. So I'm good. All right, so we did all that. And now we're going to start our project, okay? So we are going to make this fabric journal cover. And it's just a cover. I think I might start selling these in my Etsy shop. I did put a made-by label inside. I do have a few of these from when I used to do more sewing and crafty things for one of those little local artist cooperative gift shops. I still have a few of these labels left. It took me a little bit to find it, but I thought I'd stick one inside of here. Now this is inspired by a bunch of different kinds of journal covers including, but not only, Donna Downey's fabric journal. She uses on her old watercolor, I mean Inspiration Wednesday videos. I almost called them Watercolor Wednesday. Did you catch that? She does, works in a journal that's got a fabric cover that has eyelets in the spine, and she uses ribbon to hold the signature pages in. There's also the Midori, the Fodori, and the new Webster's Pages Journal planner that have holes in the spine and use elastic to hold notebooks in. So this was inspired by all of those different ideas from each of them. I like the idea of having it be a fabric cover, and as you can tell it though, it's kind of thick, and I'll show you the secret behind that. It is a plain natural colored canvas, and as we make it, I'll tell you why I picked that to be for this. And I did the Webster's Pages one that just came out has pockets inside. I think it's a great idea. So I did my own version, although I think they have too many pockets and not enough for what I would want. And so I figured out if it was my journal, what I would, why would really just want it for pens and maybe, maybe a few planner stickers. So I put two pockets, two big pockets on either side and two smaller pockets on either side. And it is a size to hold one or two Moleskine Cayet journals. This is one that's similar that has been put out by Michaels Arts and Crafts, and this is my messy sketch journal. Now this book has three of them in it, and you can get three in this one, but it's a little tight. But two fits very comfortably. There's about a half an inch all the way around, which I like. You can get three in here, and it, it stills okay. It stills okay. You can get three, so that's three Cayet journals in here. And you could hold them in with elastic like this here, or, or you could use ribbon. And like this one, you would thread the elastic or ribbon through the top and bottom holes. The center hole is for a piece of elastic, elastic loop to hold your journal closed. And lots of journals that are built in this fashion, most of them are put together the same way. So if you're unsure about what I'm talking about, there's a million videos on that now. So again, this is the recollections one. You would use the canvas one the same way. You would thread a piece of elastic in this hole down and around out that hole, tied together in a knot in the inside or the outside. And then you would thread a journal through down the center. So it's like that. Yeah. And you would take two more journals and you would take an elastic loop and hook them together through their centers. And you would thread one journal underneath that center one you've already got in there until the space between the two journals is right underneath the spine of the first one. And you've got all three in here now. And then in that center hole, a eyelet, you can put an elastic loop or a ribbon or something and maybe tie it to the knot from this longer piece that's holding your journals in and use that to either wrap around your cover to hold things in or if it's an elastic loop, you can just you can just pull it over and it'll hold everything nice and closed. All right. That being said, they're a little journal tutorial on how to put it together. That being said, most of you who are probably going to be interested in that didn't need that because you already know you can skip the eyelets and just sew papers directly into the fabric cover if you want. I like the fact that this is reusable cover. So that wasn't my original idea, but it's going to be your journal. You do what you want with it. All right. So when you figure out that you want to make one, you're going to need some pattern pieces. So I made my pieces out of cardboard because I plan on making a few of these. So I want pattern pieces that are going to be durable and really hold up to being used multiple times. So I tend to make my pattern pieces for something like this out of cardboard, chipboard, plastic, rigid plastic sheeting, something like that. So they are durable. This is an old piece, a scrap piece of mat, actually mat board. So this is for the main part of the journal, the outside and the inside. And it measures nine and three quarters by eleven and okay. And then you're going to need a second piece, which is for the pockets, which is four and four and five eighths by the same height as this one. Oh, it's a little bit longer. So nine and a half. This is actually nine and five eighths. And this is actually too long. It's like an eighth of an inch, a sixteenth of an inch too long. But anyway, you get the idea. So it should be the same length as this bigger square, but it's only four and five eighths inches wide. Okay. You're going to need to cut two pieces of fabric that are the size of the big square. And then you're going to need to take your little rectangle. Don't be too compulsive about the measurements as long as it's close. A bigger is better than smaller. Now trace it onto your canvas. Again, this is natural colored canvas. You can use duck cloth, which is found in the outdoor department of your local fabric store. You can use canvas, of course. I found this at Hobby Lobby, so it's not hard to find. You can get it in solid colors. You can get it in prints. And there's a reason that I chose the natural color, which we'll talk about as we start putting this together. So I have one that I traced here that's the size of this. And then this is just the scrap that's left over. So I'm going to go ahead and bring that line over. And I'm going to cut both of these off. These are not my fabric scissors, so they're not as sharp as they should be. Because I'm lazy today, I didn't want to get them out. Okay, so this is extra. So now we're going to make sure our fabric didn't wiggle around too much. So this extra piece, which is not quite as wide and not as square, is going to be what we make our extra pockets out of. Okay, so we need that. Then you're going to need, where did I put it? Oh, here. This stuff. So this is going to be in the fabric department of your local Hobby Lobby store or in your fabric department by their interfacing. It's going to be near the interfacing and either store. If you're not sure where that is, ask. It should all be in the same place. It's usually somewhere near the cutting table, but not always. This is extra firm, super thick interfacing. It's used for doing like fabric sculptures like bowls and things like that. It's really super, super stiff, but washable. And that's important. You could, of course, do this a little differently. And you could sew almost all of your layers together and leave one end open and then slide in some cardboard or something. This is a little better because it's flexible. And you have a really nice thick, flexible cover. And if it gets wet, it's not a big deal because you can, or dirty, you can toss the whole thing in the washing machine. So we need a piece cut off of here that's out of our big square. You don't need too much. You just need in a big enough piece to do your big square. And you only need one of that. So you're going to end up with extra, but you probably need like, well, have them measure, but I would get like 10 inches or whatever, you know, is close to that. So again, I'm going to trace my pencil. It doesn't have to be super dark. You just have to be able to see it. These are my paper scissors. These are my maple helix scissors, and they're not really intended for fabric, but they actually work pretty well. Every now and then they don't want to cut if there's too much bulk, but they're actually doing pretty well. I'm pretty impressed. Okay, so you need that. The rest of this can go back in the closet. Okay, we don't need these yet, but you will need them. I know it's a hammer. I know. Okay, so before we assemble the outside, we want to do the pockets. Now, just like the other pocket, I'm going to stick a label in here. Just found them, different label. All right, that'll work. All right, so the first thing I do on these pockets, and you want to make sure that you do one right one and one left one is, and we're not going to hem anything. We're not going to turn anything out right side out. We're going to let the fabric fray as it will. Now, on the other one, I sat here, and I won't make you guys watch me do it, but I sat here and I pulled threads out of the fabric. There we go. I purposefully frayed the edge of the fabric and I pulled threads out until it looked like that. Yeah, that gives it a neat look, so I would recommend that you do that. All right, we aren't going to sit and do that though. You can do it afterwards. You can do the assembly afterwards. Take one of your scraps, fold it in thirds. Okay, cut off this one of the thirds from the other two thirds. You got your two pockets. Do that again. And you can, of course, this is your journal, so you can make your pockets however you want. So I like the idea of having a longer pocket for pens and pencils and a shorter pocket for like stickers and planner sticky notes and that kind of thing. All right, so now I'm going to take my pockets, my little pockets, and my two big, big pockets, and I'm going to take what would normally be hemmed, the top edge of these two short pockets, and I'm going to stitch across them. Now this one I just did, and it's done. I'm off the fabric. I'm going to stick the next one in there, back and forth, stitch across, about a presser foot's width from the top of the edge. So line up the cut edge of the fabric with the outside edge on the right hand side of your presser foot. Back and forth, stitch across, back and forth, cross, back and forth, and then we're going to sew down the long edge on these two big pieces. Now this fabric is the same on both sides, so if you, you know, do it wrong, what you think is wrong on one side, it doesn't matter, just flip the fabric over. Okay, now we have this chain of pockets. So just clip the thread in between, and then cut the long strings off on the last one. Where is it? Here it is. Now we've got to lay it all back out again. All right, so now I'm going to take that edge that I just stitched along, and I would pull all the threads out. I'm not going to. You don't, not all the way down to the stitching line, but just a little bit. But if it over time pulls out more, the stitches are going to stop it from unraveling completely. So that's why you want to put a stitching line there. I am going to pull, you know, as I'm doing this and I'm seeing threads sticking out, I'm going to pull them. I'm going to trim them. I'm going to let it unravel how it wants to, one of our little pockets. And here's our other little pocket. Now on the pocket that's going to be, the little pocket that's going to be inside your front cover is where you want to put your label if you're going to put a label. So I'm going to put it here. I'm going to just eyeball it. I'm going to center it, and I'm going to stitch all the way around the edge of the label. Making sure to go back and forth at the beginning and the end, stopping with the needle down when I lift up the presser foot to turn the corner at the end, back and forth again. Now as you saw, if I stop at the corner and the needle is not down, it's in the up position. You either can turn the wheel or hit the back button and slowly step on the pedal until the needle goes into the down position. Okay, so now we've got our label on there. Now we're going to sew our little pocket to our big pocket. Yeah, and just because I want to have it look interesting, I mean you could line them all up at the bottom if that's what you want. I don't think I want to, and I didn't really on the other one. I think I'm going to pull it up about, I don't know, an inch and a half or so. Again, I'm going to use the width of the presser foot for my seam allowance, and I'm lining up the edge of the fabric with the edge of the presser foot. And I'm starting at the top right edge of the pocket. I'm going to go back and forth a couple times. I'm going to stop with the needle down and lift up the presser foot and turn the corner. Again, stop with the needle down, lift it up, turn the corner. And when you get to the top of the other side of the pocket, go back and forth a couple times. That's going to get a lot of stress on it. So you want to go back on it, forth on it a couple of times. That way it'll stay. And just because you did one one way, it doesn't mean you have to do the other one the other way. You can do them however you want. On this one I think I'm going to actually line it up on the bottom. Clip your threads, clip them as you go, and you don't have to deal with them later. Okay. Now we're going to sew our littler pockets to our bigger pocket. So I'm going to line this up with the bottom of this on the outside edge. Just like with the small pocket, I'm going to start at this upper right hand side. Presser foot width seam. Go back and forth a couple of times, all the way down to the bottom. Stop with the needle down, turn the corner. Again, trim your threads. So now we have one side with two pockets. All right. So we're going to set that one aside and we're going to do the other one. I didn't quite get that lined up with the bottom. So now we have, and our stitching, our stitching to prevent it fraying too much is on right here on this one. And it's right here on this one. That's what we want. Facing in towards the center of what's going to be the journal cover. So that's perfect. That's what we want. Now we want to start sandwiching everything together. So I'm going to take one piece of the canvas that's going to be the outside cover. And there's some pencil lines on there, but it's not going to show when all is said and done. I'm going to sandwich. I'm going to put, since there's pencil lines on here, I want that to face on the inside so it doesn't show on the outside. So this is going to be the right side. So facing the wrong side of the fabric, I'm going to put this piece of thick interfacing. Then I'm going to put this other piece of canvas. Then I'm going to put our two pockets and I'm going to make sure things are sort of lined up and I'm going to put some pins. Again, we're going to let the edges fray and rattle. So if things are off by a little fraction, it's not going to show because when you start getting them frayed and raffled, just it's not, I mean, this one's not perfect, but it, but I like, I love the way it looks. So don't worry about it. I'm going to line up my upper corners as much as I can. Come down the side and I'm going to put another pin about halfway down to three quarters of the way down. You can put as many pins as you feel you need to to keep all your layers together and straight. If you need to use 10 pins for that, then do that. Do not feel bad about having to use more pins than me. I would recommend pins and not tape or anything. Now we're going to sew everything together. So we're going to start in the center where the center where the spine would be and we're going to sew all the way around all four sides and then meet back up here where we started. So on your sewing machine, let's see if we can get you zoomed in here. Hold on one second. Okay, had to plug the camera in. We were running out of juice. Okay, so let me see if I can still zoom you in. There we go. So do you see these lines here on the base of my sewing machine? They're measurement lines for seam width. Most, some machines just have a line and they don't have the measurements on there. This machine actually tells you this one is three quarters of an inch. This one is five eighths. This one is one half an inch. If your machine has the lines, but it doesn't have the measurements, then you may want to put a piece of masking tape on there and measure them and mark them. For most mixed media and crafty projects, I either use the edge of the presser foot for my seam allowance or I use the one half inch mark, which is right here. So you might want to just figure out which one is a half an inch and put a piece of tape along that line so you know up to the edge of that tape is a half inch. How do you measure that? It's going to be the next question. So put your needle down all the way into the down position and stick a ruler up against the needle. You'll need a smaller ruler than this. You'll need a little one and you can get a seam, a measuring ruler. You can get those at the fabric store. I used to have a lot of optical rulers around here because I was an optician, but measure from the needle out to the line that's a half an inch. So that's the easiest way I know. All right, so now we're going to do some sewing. I'm going to leave you zoomed in for a minute and I'm going to start here. I'm going to try to, as much as I can, stay on the half an inch mark. Again, this is not about perfection. You have fun with this. If it's not exactly straight, it's not going to matter in the long run. So just be as straight as you can. The object of this lesson in sewing 101 is to make something interesting, challenge yourself to make something interesting that you think is complicated, but also this is practicing your straight stitches and using your machine and the measurements on your machine. So this is a great, great lesson for that. So okay, here we go. I am going to go back and forth at the beginning. I'm going to pull this down. If you're a newbie and that bothers you, you might want to stick a pin there, but don't sew over the pin. So as I get close to the corner, I'm going to pull this pin out. Don't ever sew over your pins. You'll end up hurting yourself or something. This is off a little bit, but it's fine. So one of the reasons you use, I use a larger seam allowance is because sometimes I'm off a little bit. And today is one of those days. I could tell you stories about today. It's just not been a great day. All right. Just make sure you're pulling on your fabric and that you're not sewing in any wrinkles or puckers. So stop with the down position. Turn the corner. Turn the corner. I'm going to take this pin out. I'm kind of pulling on it like this as I'm sewing so that I know that everything is flat. All the layers are flat and there's no puckers in there or wrinkles. Last turn, we're going to pull the starting threads up so we don't sew them into a knot. And we're going to sew up to that starting point and then back and forth and then clip all those threads off. Zoom you back out. Okay. So now we have this. Cool. All right. So what are we going to do with that? So the first thing you're going to do is take a pair of scissors and carefully peel back all the canvas from the front and from the inside and the canvas from the outside to reveal this hard interfacing stuff. You want to trim off the excess down to your stitching seam. You won't get exactly down there, but that's fine. You just want to get the bulk off. Just do it slowly. Go carefully and don't cut your fabric. And that's trash. And then go all the way around all the edges. Now of course you don't have to do this. You could wrap the edge if you're a little bit more advanced so or you could wrap the edge in seam binding or ribbon or lace or something. I'm lazy. I'm a lazy crafter, remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just been one of those days. I'm not going to fight with lace or seam binding today. Are you kidding me? I'm probably screwed up on camera. And as I'm working with this, you know, some of the threads are popping off. At some time, at some point, enough of it will be unraveled that it won't do that anymore. But while it's new and fresh, things are unraveling and that's okay because that's what I want it to do. I want it to unravel. So as it does that, I'm just going to yank stuff off because that's, I want that. All right, there's some threads right there. I missed one around this side. Now you could definitely make this out of any fabric. You want to have it be something that's thick and stiff enough to protect your journals and to really hold up to some wear and tear. But there's some great outdoor fabrics out there that you can get. You can use scraps of something that you have. You could do an old pair of blue jeans. And I have an idea for that. And if you guys would like to see this out of an old pair of blue jeans and how to do that because there is a right way and a wrong way to do it out of the old jeans without breaking your sewing machine. If that's something you guys would be interested in doing, let me know. So just go slow. There we go. Oh, this is trash. So now we have this. I'm wearing black today. That probably wasn't a great choice. I want to be covered in threads. My husband's going to come home and go, what the heck have you been doing today? So now we have the base for our cover, but how are you going to get your notebooks in or how are you going to get your papers in? You could of course sew through this without doing the eyelet part. You don't need to do that if you're, again, a more advanced sewer. You could put buttonholes at the top and bottom. What we're going to do is we're going to fold this in half. We're going to line up our short edges. And then we're going to push. And what this is doing is creasing the fabric and giving us a center point. Okay. So now we have a crease along the center that you probably can't really see on camera, but there's a crease there in the middle. I'm going to take my pencil and my ruler and three quarters of an inch from the top. I'm going to put a little pencil mark, three quarters of an inch from the bottom. I'm going to put a little pencil mark and about halfway between these two pencil marks, which is about four and an eighth. We're going to put a pencil mark, ruler away, pencil away. And we're going to crease it again just to make sure we've got a good crease. And we're going to put eyelets in here and eyelets aren't hard, but poking a hole can be hard. I'm going to bust out my crocodile. If you don't have this, then your only alternative is to use a tiny pair of scissors to cut a hole. But I'm going to use my crocodile to punch the holes. And I'm going to line up my pencil mark with the center of where I want to punch the hole. And then I'm going to move this to the right or left until it's lined up with that center fold. And again, if you don't get it exactly right, it's not a huge deal. Like that one's off a little bit. That's all right. We need to punch two of them anyways. So let's do that. So you need to do it for the eyelet size that I'm going to use. I need to do them in clusters of three holes. Otherwise, the hole is not big enough. I got to turn it around and do the other one. We're just taking out the bulk of the fabric. You don't write where the eyelet's going to be. You're going to need a hammer and you're going to need some eyelets. So you can get eyelets in a kit like this at the fabric store. Frequently, this is just the grommets or eyelets, but if you get the kit, it'll come with setting tools. And you really want the one with the setting tools for whatever size eyelets you choose to use. And I have this. I don't have like a little eyelet collection or anything. Who told you that big fib? So this is the size that I want. Okay, so when your eyelets will come with two pieces, one is longer in the center than the other one. The longer one, push through your holes from the outside. Put this black piece so that that eyelet is centered in there. Let's see. It's the wrong black one. It's like, why is that one not fitting? Is this the wrong one? This one, I need the little one. Oh yeah, that's better. So it's going to be cradled in this depression here. That's going to hold it while we set the eyelet. I'm going to put the shorter piece with the this inner raised part faced down over the one that's sticking up. You have this metal piece that goes over the top. Your eyelet kit will come with instructions. And then you're going to hold this and you're going to hit this part with a hammer. Do not hit your fingers. Okay, take call caution, please. One eyelet. So let's do the other ones. No, now we have three eyelets. They're not exactly straight. That top one's a little bit off center, but oops. But anyway, it's all good. So there you have it. That's the way to make a fabric journal cover. Ideally, these would be lined up in a row. See, this one is lined up. Oh well, I told you I was having an off day today. The reason I chose to do it out of plain canvas is because these would be a good thing to make or sell as gifts for your artist friends. It's a plain blank canvas. They can paint it however they want. So before they even fill it with fun papers, they can paint this and stencil on it and do whatever they want to it, and it's a plain blank cover. So there's no buying a journal and settling for a color that you don't like because you can get one of these blank ones and you can paint it to be exactly the way you want. And I think that's a fabulous idea. Alright, so that's it. If you guys would like to see me do this out of an old pair of jeans a little bit differently, let me know. I will do that tutorial. We're going to do, I have a couple other ideas coming up also, so if you really like these, we'll keep doing them. Have some fun making these journal covers, practicing your straight stitches. Again, you don't have to do the eyelet part. You could just stitch it through the center of the spine. You could still do it as elastic and just stitch it through. But I think the eyelets are fun. Of course, ideally, you would want this one to be here. Maybe I'll have to give it to one of you all that doesn't mind that it's crooked. We'll have to see. Alright, that's it for today. Don't forget to go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Practice your sewing, practice your straight stitches, and don't let eyelets scare you. Alright, that's it for right now. I'll see you all later. Bye.