For the Love of Journaling

Do you keep a journal? I do, I have for years. Back at least twenty five years ago I read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and began the habit of "morning pages", although I don't subscribe to that discipline as strictly as I used to, I do still find that putting my thoughts down on paper first thing every morning helps me clear my mind and to organize my thoughts and plans. I have always used simple, garden variety notebooks, nothing fancy, to continue this habit. Sometime before Christmas last year I stumbled upon an Instagram post by Simply Eilene, a crafter who explained the simple way that she gathered fabric strips, leftover batting, a hair tie and a button to create lovely covers for dime store composition books. You know the style of books that I'm referring to.
The beauty of these is that the covers are reusable! Brilliant! I quickly pulled together the supplies (had everything on hand) and made a stack of these as Christmas gifts for friends.

I added a pen and a few Christmas sweet treats, placed them in clear cellophane bags and sent them off. Time marched on over the last few months and I remembered, when I was writing in my dog-eared spiral notebook a few weeks ago, that I was planning on diving deep into that strips and strings bin and making more of these cute journal covers for others, plus one for myself! 😉

I created the dark red one at the top of this post and these over the course of the next few days, they've all been gifted. The recipients seemed to love them! But, I still didn't have one for myself.

Until yesterday. 🍓 Using the stitch and flip method and a 45° drawn line onto a scrap of batting I sewed strip after strip until I'd covered the base. I trimmed it up, cut 4" off one side (to add the hair tie into a seam) and then machine stitched binding on each end using a contrasting fabric.

At this point I laid a composition book open on top of the backside of the cover and folded those ends in and over for size. I attached a few Wonder Clips to hold the ends and added the top and bottom binding in the same manner as the short ends, stitching it all into place by machine. 

At this point I added my notebook by slipping the covers into the pockets on each side, closed it up and pulled the elastic tie onto the front to measure for the button placement. 

Voilà!  

My own journal cover sewn from strawberry prints that I've been hoarding. Once I began making these and had pulled all the necessary supplies onto the worktable it took me about an hour start to finish for each one. The only hand sewing involved is adding the button. If you're looking for a quick and easy gift you might want to consider this idea. I've made a few of these for children and have placed an unruled notebook inside so that they can illustrate their pages unhindered by lines. In fact, I'm going to switch out my new cover to an unruled notebook as doodling and drawing can only add to the depth of my morning pages; these can also be utilized as project books and/or planners; my journals also have endless "to do" lists. My new cutie-patootie notebook won't be gathering dust, rest assured. 

Life is Good!