How to sew a book cover {that fits more than just one book}

February 1, 2013.Reading time 6 minutes.

Do you carry your book around wherever you go? Well, I do.
To keep them from getting damaged in my bag I use handmade book covers. No dog-ears no more!

Depending on how large you make the cover, it will fit several books that are about the same size.

First of all you need to make a pattern.
What you need:

Pick a book size you like. It can be your favorite one, the one that you read at the moment or one you want to give as a present to someone.
I think a standard paperback book size works great, since you’ll probably have and find a lot of books that fit in there.

Take a large sheet of paper (or tape some sheets together). It should be more than three times as wide as your book is. The height is the height of your book plus a comfort zone of about 2-3cm/1-1,5inch.

You’ll need that so the book slips in easily and the bigger the comfort zone, the more books will fits into the cover. But don’t exaggerate, otherwise it will be too loose.

Lay the book on the paper strip, front cover facing you.
To determine the size of the flap, fold the left side of the paper over the cover until the flap has the size you want it to have.
I think a large flap is good – the book cover will fit more tightly and you’ll have to space to keep some postcards, bookmarkers, etc.

Now close the book and turn it as seen in the pictures below.

To get the size of the front flap, fold the right side of the paper over your book and mark the paper where you want your front flap to end. Draw a line and cut the rest of the paper off.

Now you’ve got the pattern for cutting out your fabric.
For a simple book cover with a button fastening you will need two pieces of fabric.
When you place your pattern on the fabric, don’t forget to add seam allowance! I used about 1cm of seam allowance for the book cover I made.

In case you want to embellish your fabric, for instance with sequins, buttons, fabric paint etc., do it after you cut out the fabric and before you start sewing.
This is especially important when you’re using fabric paint, since you have to iron it before sewing to fix it.

This is one idea of how to embellish simple fabric with fabric paint. This book cover was a gift for my best friend.

If the fabric is slightly see-through, you can just place a copy or print-out of want you want to draw underneath the fabric and trace it with a textile pen.
I found the picture with the owl here and slightly changed it.

Before pinning and sewing everything together, it’s time to add any ribbon or labels.
If you want to add ribbon as in the picture above, place it in between the two fabric pieces and pin the ends of the ribbon onto the seam allowance to fixate it before sewing.

The Sewing

Pin the two fabric pieces together, right sides facing each other. Then sew along the marked seam line.
Don’t sew them together completely, but leave a gap of about 5-6cm/2-3inch, since you have to turn the whole thing inside out.
For that pull out the fabric, grabbing the right side through the gap you have left in the seam. The part will be handstitched up later on. A ruler may help you to define the edges and corners.

To get a flap like in the picture below, you need to turn your fabric right side up, so the lining is facing down.

Now fold one side of the fabric to create the flap. Make sure you’ve got the correct side, in case you embellished the outer fabric. You don’t want everything to be upside down in the end or the have the flap on the wrong side.

The seam of the flap will be handstitched.

Pin the flap an shown in the picture above.
In the picture above, the darker blue fabric is the outer fabric. We will only be stitching together the edges of the lining!.
It looks nicer in the end and you don’t want the flap to sit too tight.

This is how it looks when everything is stitched up nicely. you can now turn it and it should look like this:

Put your book inside and close the cover to marke the point where you want to put a button. Handstitch the button onto the cover and you’re done!

Here are some ideas/book cover I made lately:

I was featured at:

chocolate bean pillbox {DIY in 15 minutes #3}

January 6, 2013.Reading time 1 minute.

Another DIY I did before Christmas: “anti-stress” and “anti-wanderlust” pillboxes!

All you need:

– tiny empty jars and bottles
– chocolate beans
– vintage printables + paper
– twine
– glue stick

chocolate bean pillbox DIY

I used a tiny jam jar and a mini brandy bottle that I cleaned and dried up thoroughly. I sorted the chocolate beans by colour, to make the two sorts of pills look differently.

For making the labels I used free vintage printables I found online. Here are some of my favorites:

– free collage sheets

– vintage grunge printables

I altered the label in Photoshop and gauged the correct size. Cut the label out and glue it on the lid or on the front of the bottle.

I printed out some pretty vintage tags, punched holes in them and tied them up with the twine.

Maybe you know someone that could need some anti-stress pills, anti-lovesickness medicine or frustration-protection?

Have fun!

knotted necklace {diy}

December 31, 2012.Reading time 1 minute.

I made this neckace months ago, but couldn’t post it since I made it for someone who reads this blog frequently for Christmas…well, here it is. It’s fairly easy to do, but it took me about 2-3 Gilmore Girls episodes until I had threaded all the beads. (Don’t ask how many – I didn’t count!)

I used three different colours of tube beads in random order.

I basically made two strings (each consisting of eight single strings) and knotted them together using the Double Carrick Bend and twisted the ends.

For the fastener I made a loop out of rocaille beads and used a bigger square-shaped bead on the other end. I used crimp beads to seal the end.

One string is a little longer than the other – thus the necklace/knot is slightly asymmetric which makes it look more interesting.

Have fun – oh, and Happy New Year! 🙂

How to make a mobile phone case {the sewing}

December 22, 2012.Reading time 5 minutes.

After making the pattern – here comes the fun part: the sewing.

If you haven’t done the pattern yet, here’s a link to the pattern making tutorial:
#1 transfer the pattern onto the fabric

Note that you won’t need to add seam allowance any more. You will need two pieces for the outer and the inner fabric and one piece of fusible interfacing.

#2 transfer the pattern onto the interfacing

…by placing the pattern under the fusible interfacing and tracing/cutting along the markings of the seam allowance. Iron it onto the backside of the outer fabric. (You can skip this step if you don’t want to use interfacing. It just helps your phone case to keep its form.)

#3 apply the fastening

Before sewing outer and inner fabric together, don’t forget to apply the fastening. Find the right spot for Velcro, buttons, snap buttons by using your phone. Put the cut-outs on top of each other and wrap them around the phone, mark the spot for the fastening on flap (inner fabric) and pocket (outer fabric). Sew the fastening on both inner and outer fabric.

For the phone case with the little owls on it I used velcro tape. For the one in the tutorial I had to find something else, since I made it for someone else’s phone and didn’t have the phone to adjust the fastening.
My workaround: Applying a loop for the flap. This way the fastening is flexible, and the exact height of the phone doesn’t matter.

#3 the sewing-everything-together

Fold and press the seam allowance on the bottom edge and prepare the “pocket” by folding over and pinning it (see pictures below) on both pieces of fabric.

Try making the inner fabric pocket a little shorter than the outer one (see picture above). By putting it into the outer pocket later on it will otherwise stick out by a few millimeters and we don’t want that to happen. For the same reason make the outer fabric’s pocket a tiny bit bigger as well by using less seam allowance (see picture below).

Now sew together the side seams of the pockets separately.

Place both pieces on top of each other, right sides together. Before pinning, make sure the edge of the outer pocket protrudes by a few millimeters.

Sew together the two flaps.

#4 boxing the corners

To give your phone case a bit more depth, you can box the corners.
Flatten a corner so the side seam is in line with the bottom seam; the point where they meet is at the point of your fold. Determine the amount of depth you want which should be the same as the depth of your phone. In this case it was 1cm.

Mark and sew across the corner, perpendicular to the seams, as shown in the picture below. Normally you would fold this tuck down against the bottom seam, and hand-stitch it to the seam allowance, but in this case the pocket are quite small, so you can just cut it off.

Do this with both pockets.

Turn the outer pocket and flap inside out again and tuck the inner pocket into the outer pocket. It should look like this:

Sew the inner pocket onto the outer pocket, use hand-stitching if your phone case is quite small.

If you want, you can also stitch around the seams of the flap to give it a better shape. I didn’t do it in this case since the fabric was quite thick, but with the other one I did (see the first picture where I used the owl fabric).

And then you’re done! If you have any questions or my instructions don’t seem clear at some points, please leave me a comment and I will answer as soon as possible!

Have loads of fun sewing!

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10 things i love: handmade gifts

December 5, 2012.Reading time 1 minute.

The 10 things i love this week is all about DIY/handmade gifts! For all crafters out there that are still looking for christmas gift ideas!
I personally love giving people handmade gifts. Personal, individual and unique gifts are the best, don’t you think? At least from what I experienced, my friends/family love beautifully made DIY much more than things you simply buy. And as the following gift ideas/tutorials show you, it can be so easy and inexpensive!

#1 cute ear warmers