How to Make a Quilt Journal

I have been fighting for a very long time and I found over the years that I really like to save the bits and pieces of projects I make. so that I know what works for me and what I really love. One of the best ways to do this, is to keep a journal but I have not been able to find a journal I really like, So I figured out a way to make my own. Here is the journal that am working in currently and as you can see it's nice and fairly covered and has these ties for keeping it closed. In these journals I like to keep ideas about color, fabrics that I really really love. I also like to keep clippings from magazines of patterns that I really love or clothes that I really love to give me ideas for the future. Here is a little journal I made that is perfect for carrying around in my purse that I just made of some cute printed fabric.. Let me show you how to do it. The journals that I really like for this process are called the Strathmore Visual Journals. The covers are really steady and the paper is awesome. So you can just do anything in these and they are just going to hold up great. When you want to make your journal, the first thing you want to do is measure the size of the cover that you are going to need. To do this, I measure from this edge of the journal all the way around the spiral binding to this edge. That's 19 1/2 inches. So for this, am going to add 3/4 of an inch to get That would be the size fabric I need for one dimension. The next dimension I'm going to need, is this dimension. So I measure from the top to the bottom and it's 12 inches. So am going to add 3/4 of an inch to that for my second dimension. The next dimension you are going to need is how bigger the flap you want to keep your journal in place. I measure here at eight inches for this, I'm going to double up the fabric so am going to turn that into 16 inches and then I'm going to add another 3/4 of an inch for same. And then the width of that is going to be the same as the 12 3/4 from the other measurement. So am going to need two pieces of fabric cut at this dimension and one am going to need a quarter piece at that dimension. Since my journals take a lot of abuse, I like to really densely clothe the fabric. Here I've taken a couple of pieces of fabric layer them and clothed them. They were bigger than this dimension when I started and once I was clothed, I cut them down to that dimension. This will wrap perfectly around my journal to make a really nice cover. Now you can embellish your journal anyway you want. It's a really fun, easy way to try all sorts of things you can paint, you can use fancy clothing it's really can be very creative. I love applique, so I've decided that I was going to do some appliques. When you are setting up an embellishment, just realize that the journal before didn't have and so you can place your embellishment so that it's kind of center in your journal. Once you have that all that done, you can start adding the other parts. I like to tie my journals clothes with pieces of ribbon. So the first thing I'm going to do, is pin a couple of pieces with ribbon. Now, the fabric that I cut at this dimension the 16 3/4 to 12 3/4. I have two pieces of that and I've cut them out and I've press them wrong sides together so I have a nice fold and those are going to be my flaps. So to do this, I align my right edges with the journal cover on both sides. And then you just pin this in place to secure them while you are sewing. The next thing you are going to have to deal with is you have these row edges here which aren't going to work in a journal. So I've cut a couple links of fabric that's two inches wide and I have pressed it in half wrong sides together so that I have something to finish that. And I just line the row edge up with the journal covered just like I did before and I pin those in place. Once you have all these pinned and set up you can take it to your sewing machine and just sew a quarter inch all the way around. That's all it takes and this will all finish the row edges. Here I have one that's all done and I just need to trim the corners and put it on the journal. To do that, each corner I want to trim close to the corner but not into the stitching. So that you do not have a big lump of fabric when I turn this inside out and put it on my journal. Now we are all set to turn this inside out and see how it works. I like to use a point turner this is something from garment sewing that people use and It's really handy when you are a project like this. Just reach in there and just very carefully with your poin turner poke those corners out so you have a nice fabric cover for your journal. At this point you can either machine stitch down these edges to cover that. You just leave them plain if you want to. Once you have it on your journal it's not going to matter too much or you can just hand stitch it. As you can see, now you have a super cute little cover for your journal to make it your own. This is a great project to use all your creativity on or to try new techniques that you haven't tried before that you want to try out.