 Hey guys, we are going to make some more travelers notebook covers and this time we're going to use blue jeans. And now I've already cut the pattern pieces out of the blue jeans and I'll show you how I did that. First we need to change the color of the thread on the sewing machine. I have black in here and I want to change it to something that's more denim colored and there is actually a thread color called denim that has varying shades of dark blue in it that you can buy at the fabric store and my thread is caught on something. There we go. I'll set the black aside over there. Anyway it's called denim and it looks like this so you might want to look at buying that. It's by Coats and Clarks. This is from Hobby Lobby but most of the thread manufacturers have something that's denim called denim or jeans or something. Put that in here. I don't think we're going to get too far with this bobbin because it doesn't have much thread on it but we'll use it the way it is and we will see. For proper threading of your sewing machine please be sure to check your owner's manual. Each sewing machine is a little bit different and you need to read, study and understand your owner's manual in order to understand your machine. I have a jeans needle in my machine so if you're going to do something like this even if you're using canvas like in the first Traveler's Notebook video which I will link in the description below along with another video I did a long time ago on sewing with denim where I made my denim apron that I wear a lot in my art room. They both have really great hints and tips in them so I'll link them both below. You want to make sure if you're using either the sick canvas or denim that you have a denim needle in here because it's a thicker sharper needle and if you try to use anything else you're probably just going to break your needle. All right we'll get started in a minute. I'll be right back. Okay I've already cut up my pattern pieces out of an old pair of my husband's blue jeans of which this is not so we won't be cutting them but I wanted to show you how I disassembled the pants to get them ready to have something made out of them so when I get the old pair of jeans for my husband the first thing I do is I cut both of the legs off right across here at the crotch then I take the top part of the pants and if I'm not making an apron then I take the pockets off which you can see that I did and I also take out the little small this is the these are usually usually visely vis and they have not only the small pocket on the inside front pocket here but it is a complete pocket meaning that it doesn't run down off into the inside seam and it's really only like this much of a pocket it's actually a complete pocket so I usually take that whole pocket out and then I discard the rest of the top of the pants if I'm making an apron out of it as you will see in the apron video if you watch the apron video we actually use the whole back of the pants so then I only really disassemble the front and toss the front when you're cutting your pieces out of the legs the first thing I do is split the legs open to make them a flat piece of fabric so I usually take the legs and split them well depends on what I'm making most of the time you don't want to sew over this welted seam so this is got lots of thickness of fabric in it already and if you fold it over and try to sew over it even with a denim needle you're going to have trouble so when you're making other things out of an old pair of blue jeans you want to work around or work with this fabric this seam as it is in a single layer or work around it and not use it at all so if I'm making something like we're making today where I'm making a notebook cover or a bag out of the jeans then I usually split the leg up along this seam and open it up flat and then on the other then after I've done that then I cut the seam off and then I have a nice flat piece of fabric and it will have a seam in it but it's a regular seam and it's not as thick and bulky and it's easier to sew over all right put those down back here and we've got all our pieces ready to go and I do have a bunch of pieces for pockets I have the two back pockets from the pants and that one inside pocket so these are nice and I do want to trim the pockets up a little bit because you don't want to if you're going to use them on your on your notebook this is too much fat extra fabric you want to leave about a half an inch all the way around the edge if you can use a nice sharp pair of fabric scissors I'm going to quite get a half an inch down here at the bottom of this but that's fine I'm going to get cut it as big as I can as long as it's straight and even now because this little pocket was part of the inside pants pocket it's got this piece of lining in it see we don't need that so we can just cut that off without cutting through the denim I'm just gonna and it's also riveted here right because they're Levi's they rivet all the seams so I want to pull this and just kind of snip the fabric so that we have a little piece here but I've taken away most of the bulk of that extra fabric that we don't need cute little pocket we can use on our notebook with the big pockets you basically do the same thing I have plenty of fabric around these so I can leave about a half an inch and again if you're making an apron then follow the directions in that video which are a little bit different you of course can make an apron and add extra pockets to it if you have more than one pair of blue jeans I've done that a few times for customers one more now if you don't want the brand name tag on the jeans and it's sticking out of the pocket right here then you can cut that off I don't mind it so I'm going to leave it all right now we've got all our pieces ready to go so we're going to make kind of piles I'm going to put my pockets here I've got my front and back pieces here I've got my pieces for the inside pockets here so we're going to start doing our basic assembly I need to get some labels out and I need to figure out kind of where I'm going to put these these little pockets and the big pockets and I'll be right back okay I got all my stuff together I think maybe let's move the machine a little closer to me but angle it still so you guys can see and I think I'm going to try to work with the pockets on the inside of the notebook because I think that would be fun that way so let's see the first thing I'm going to do is take four of my larger strips and we are going to at about a presser foot's width or a little bit more away from the cut edge of the fabric we are going to sew a stitching line now this is even though this is done it does have a wrong side and a right side so make sure when needed when we're doing the assembly or you're doing your assembly that you have the right side of the fabric up or you know that it's facing the correct way I'll show you I'll explain more what I mean in a minute we just want a straight stitch so make sure your stitch width which is how far the needle moves this way and that way yeah should be a zero the stitch length which is how long your stitches are should be medium to small so I'm going to set mine at about three go back and forth a couple fourth a couple times in the meeting back and forth back and forth and we're not going to we're going to do sort of assembly line fashion because I am making more than one of these and they will be for sale in my Etsy shop I'm sewing this with the right side facing up that's a little far away from the edge but it's okay it won't matter this is just to prevent it from fraying too much basically cut all of our threads cut our pieces apart there we go now so we have two two and two all right so I have them laying down here on the table which you can't really see but I have them laying down here on the table this way with the lines of stitching facing in which is how they're going to be on the inside of the notebook cover and then I'm going to cut some of these other pieces we're going to do the one cut one third of them off approximately it doesn't have to be exact okay now I have to decide I have to decide before we get too far what exactly I'm doing with these big pockets because they're the ones I'm not sure about I kind of am wondering if I should put them on the outside but then I'm going to have trouble if I do that putting the rivets through down the center but I could put them on the outside and cut them in half or three quarters that actually would work all right so I do think that I want to take I have one of these small pockets this here and I'm thinking that I want to use that on the inside somewhere because I think that would be cute on the inside and I could put my label like at the top I like that idea and I'm only going to be able to do it on one but each one of these is unique and different so that's fine I so I don't need one of these pieces of denim fabric so I'm going to put that aside we're going to do some stay stitching which is what this is called across the tops of all of our smaller pockets now we're doing this in real time I'm not fast forwarding or cutting a bunch of stuff out if I if I stop the camera and you see you know the clip merge to another clip it's because I've had to answer the phone or the computer or something or stop and get something out of the closet because I forgot something because you know my memory's got more holes than a pasta strainer okay so now we need to put our labels and on one short piece we're going to put a label and I'm going to just take my label and I'm going to center it in the rectangle we're going to sew all the way around now on my machine if I go too fast my stitch length has a habit of migrating itself larger the dial moves on its own so I have to constantly come over here and check and make sure it's still on I want it to be on three or near three that probably isn't going to be true with your machine it's just one of the quirks of this machine all these little threads off and then I'm going to take one of my really big pieces this is the one that the little small pocket is going to go on and I'm going to center my label up here near the top an inch or so inch and a half from the top we're going to sew it down if you're doing these for sale like if you're doing maybe an arts and crafts show where you're selling them in your Etsy shop not only do you totally have my permission to use the pattern that way but make sure you stick a label in it for goodness sakes so that people know who made it be proud of what you do these little embroidered labels can be purchased through websites lots of different websites out there that do them all right so now we can start assembling our pockets now I've got all my pieces ready so I can start putting my pockets together on my pieces of fabric so the first thing I'm going to do of course is sew the little pockets to the big pockets with this one because we've got so much bulk of fabric I want to make sure that it's closer to this edge than that edge and that it is up from the top bottom because I don't want to have a problem sewing through I don't want to hit this rivet when I sew the whole thing together that would be a problem so when you're sewing these salvaged pockets on from the jeans you know don't go too quickly go slow if you hit some of that um that seam the double double welted seam ah yeah yeah I'm rusty with the names of seam seam because I don't sew that much anymore um then make sure that you um just have you know like I said a nice sharp needle and you're not going too fast the big thing is don't hit this rivet because if you hit that metal it can guarantee you're going to break your needle and we don't want that to happen make sure your fingers do not go underneath the presser fits that's also bad guess how I know that yeah yeah yeah not once twice because really I did learn the first time once was on the job my boss came up and tapped me on the shoulder scared the crap out of me so there that's going to be cute right I think that's going to be cute all right that's going to go on there all right so now we're going to do the rest of these and I'm going to just again assembly line sew them I'm going to make sure when you're assembling them that you've got your two right sides facing up towards you and that you don't have one of them looking like that yeah you want them to be right sides to right sides out both right sides facing up now I tried really hard when I cut all these pieces out to avoid any seams if possible I just didn't want the seams on there you might feel differently about it but like I said earlier be careful about where you place the seam and how much how bulky it is um it might make it difficult or impossible to sew through and there's a million things you can make with a pair of blue jeans I really do recommend the other video um the apron video I used to make hot pads and table runners and all kinds of things out of just old blue jeans and they always were um good sellers both at the craft shop that I was at and when I did craft shows so now we're going to just clip all our threads I'm going to just dump them on the floor because I need a vacuum in here anyway so it doesn't matter all right whoops it hit the camera sorry all right so now we can assemble all of our pockets on our side large pocket and we can sew them all down again make sure that you have all your right sides facing up you don't want to sew them this way so no we don't want that when you're working with any fabric that has a right side and a wrong side you want to be aware of that and that you um are taking precautions and you're assembling them in the correct way oh see we ran out a bobbin thread let's do that first I knew that wouldn't last long all right so if there's any little bits of thread left on your bobbin when you run out of thread just take it off my bobbin um threader is on the top here so I'm going to put the bobbin on make sure it's seated all the way down and then I have to push it over I have to release the wheel here on the end so that the needle does not move up and down pull my thread out but there's a hook here it has to stay into then I'm going to wrap my thread around here a few times and then I'm going to hold on to it I like to give it some extra tension because I just feel like I get a nicer wind on my bobbin if I do and then I get a nicer even more evenly wound bobbin if I do that re-thread the machine gotta tighten that wheel back up again okay dokey now we're all ready to go right I'm going to line the bottom up of this smaller pockets with the bottom edge of this inside flap so we'll call it a flap you can hear the machine start to get louder not only do I think my machine needs a little oiling and dusting but we're starting to get a lot of layers of denim here I do think my machine might need some oiling every year or two I take it into the sewing machine repair place and I have them whether it's running well or not and I have them just give it a really super thorough cleaning and oiling and that's a good maintenance thing to do with your machine every once in a while you don't have to do it you know once a month or anything um and if you don't do a lot of sewing every you know a couple years is probably fine but you should do it occasionally it's off again as we go we don't I don't like all these big hanging honking threads so you want to get two with the stay stitching facing this way and two with the stay stitching facing that way because this is going to be the open part on the inside of the journal cover and where you place the label doesn't matter if it's front or back just make sure that it's in there somewhere what I do did just notice is I put this one with the label on it on this back piece and here it's on the front piece usually I like it on the front it doesn't matter as long as I don't put both of these on the same cover so we don't want to do that that would be bad all right so but you know these are handmade and unique and no two are exactly the same so that's what we tell ourselves how we can um justify them not being perfect you wouldn't know it but I am a closet perfectionist some things do make me crazy but I'm not going to rip that out now on this one I noticed as I was sewing it that that fabric is hanging over a little bit here on the inside edge so I'm going to trim it easier to trim it now that it will be after the notebook cover is already assembled so now it's all more even okay so now we'll do the other other side I don't know that I would advocate doing these out of stretch denim I think that might make your job hard um because of the stretchy nature of the fabric I think I would stick to regular denim um baby blue jeans are really fun to do things like this with if only for taking the little pockets and things off of them um and then using adult blue jeans for the rest because baby blue jeans always have fun um like embroidery and things on them so they're really cool this one's going to be tricky because this one's got this other pocket on it so I've got to be careful and I can't do too much trimming see what happens so that's what I mean about going slow when you get to the thick parts this one had the same trouble on the inside where it's a little bit that one fabric's bigger than the other now I could probably leave it um but it's on the outside uh do I want to leave it maybe I do want to leave it oh I don't think I do I'm going to trim it oops or at least even it up there we go all right so now before we do all of our assembly the other thing I want to do is I want to attach these big pockets at least part of them to the outer fabric so again I want to have right sides together I do think I'm going to end up cutting part of the pocket off but I think this will be cool if I can manage this and get everything sewn together we'll see if it ends up being too much denim all right so I'm going to just I'm not going to pin anything I'm just going to lay it on here because you know why would I pin anything it's really you get it sewn on there you're going to be left with something that looks like this I'm going to trim this off and then we're going to have this and when the journal is made and sewn together they'll be at a pot they'll be this will be sewn down and there'll be a pocket here so that I think will be cool now you could save this and it could be a tall thin pencil pocket I'm not going to because it would be kind of really skinny and I've got you know we always seem to have lots of blue jeans around here all right I'm going to do one more because I've got one more pocket kind of center it and line it up I don't want it to go too far towards the center because like I said before then you are going to be able to get the eyelets in now you could do a fabric collage on here before you do the assembly there's one you want to do it you could sew bits of lace you could sew um appliques little pieces of old handkerchief some little bits of crochet um doilies anything really do it before you do the assembly and you know if you have a large stash of stuff like we all do um go through your stash and pick out some things all right so now we're going to trim this one like we did the other one get rid of the extra pocket parts see okay so now we've got all our pieces together all righty okay so these are my two back pieces and they have nothing on them and then I've got my two front pieces with our partial pockets on them and then I've got my inside flaps all right so this is how we're going to start this we're going to start with the outside face down we're going to grab a piece of stiffener then an inside piece face up inside front flap inside back flap so that your stay stitching seams are facing each other towards the center of what's going to be your notebook cover then I'm going to just put some pins in the corners to keep all the layers together oops ouch jabbed myself to keep all the layers together and sort of lined up I really need to get a pin cushion it's not like I don't have some around here somewhere but I put them away I don't know where the away place is that's not good on I could only find the jar I'm going to try to line up the corners as much as I can now this is the piece with a small pocket on it so when we sew this one normally I would sew from the front side but I'm going to sew from the inside so that I can make sure I don't hit these metal rivets on this pocket okay so now I've got all my layers pinned together so let's do the other one I need another piece of stiffener inside inside front flap inside back flap and pin so I'm lining up the corners of the denim and I'm just making sure that I've got some of the stiffener underneath where I'm going to sew my stiffener seems to be cut a little wonky so I cut it the other day and I don't know it was the day of the full moon I have no excuse except that it was a full moon now like with the denim apron if you really want this to fray a lot and I'm assuming that you're using an old worn pair of jeans for this then like with the denim apron video and for a better explanation go watch the video make slits in your in your seams to the stitching like every half of an inch and then wash it and when you do that it's going to unravel a whole bunch all right so now we've got our two covers and they're all pinned together it's over here all right we're going to sew these together in just a minute I'm going to go run for a cough drop I'll be right back