I was enchanted when I saw some wonderful, roughly-quilted scrapbooks on one of my current favorite web sites, Craftster.
The creator of these lovely books, Craftster’s Phizzychick, credited Teesha Moore, who has a series of YouTube videos showing how to make these gorgeous journals and scrapbooks.
I owe my cousin a wedding present, so it was the perfect opportunity to give this technique a whirl.
This is my first one, so I’m still learning… Here are a few of my ideas, and if you have some to share as well, please leave a comment!
The local fabric store had some giant, antique gold hooks and eyes, which made interesting clasps:
I attached eyelets to the inside of the spine, and then threaded colorful binding rings (from the office supply store) through the eyelets.
The pages are twelve 11 x 14 ” sheets of Bristol Board. I put eyelets on the pages, too, to reinforce them.
Here is a detail shot of the upper left corner. You can see an iron-on butterfly applique (re-colored by hand, since the original colors were pretty outrageously bright), and a metal frame from Tim Holtz/Ideology.
If you have ever used those computer printer sheets that create iron-on transfers for fabric, you can make some cool embellishments. The “2011” in the photo above (padded a little bit, underneath) and the quote and bicyclists in the picture below, were all computer-generated iron-ons. I used a very fine-weave fabric (mattress ticking) as the base for all.
The back of the book is one large piece, with butterfly fabric on the inside…
… a piece of stiff felt to help it hold its shape… bamboo batting (I used that inside all my panels, instead of the polyester fiberfill that Teesha uses)…. and then upholstery fabric on the back.
(And yes, that is another one of those iron-on quotes.)
There are also a bunch of additional little charms and trims, etc. from my stash.
I really hope my cousin and her husband like it, and fill it with lots of happy memories!
Go watch Teesha’s videos and try this technique, too! I’ve already got three or four more designs lined up in my head. So it looks like I’ll be sewing a lot in the next few weeks!
