Anyway, I wanted to use fleece, so I dug through my scraps and found a purple one big enough for the job (I really wanted blue or green, but whatever). I measured it the same way I used to measure my paper book covers 15 years ago, making it a half inch wider on top and bottom. When I went to make the finished edges on top and bottom I put the stitches in about 1/8 of an inch from the edge of my fold so they would fall close to the edge of my book, instead of higher up on the panel where I thought they'd be really obvious (aka ugly).When I was pretty sure my cover was a suitable size, I centered it on my journal and started planning my embellishments. I free hand cut the "e" out of felt (if you don't trust your free handing skills, use your computer to print out a large letter in the size and font that you want and pin that to your fabric) then I rooted around in my crafty stash and came up with the plastic flower and button. (On a side note, the "e" was a strategic move on my part to keep my daughters from swiping the journal for themselves). Since I haven't permanently secured the cover yet, I took it off and sewed my "e" on with fun colorful thread (that shows my quirky mistakes really well now that I'm looking at it - oh well), then I hand sewed the button on over the flower. (The flower had a pre-punched hole in the center that made the hand sewing a snap.)
When my embellishments were all secured I returned the cover to the journal and hand stitched the sides closed. Here's another hint - fleece is another stretchy material, so go ahead and pull the cover really really tight before stitching for optimum tidiness.
Predictably, my daughters were rather psyched about this style of journal cover, which means I might be off the hook for not making them the tee - shirt journals I had planned to make yesterday... 
1 comment:
My name starts with the Letter "E" for Erica... too!!! I like any color fleece scrap you have...lol I like your quirky sewing...
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