Hey remember just yesterday in high school when we had to cover our textbooks with an
old grocery sack? Well I’ve got one better, one that will last a lifetime, one using Kraft
Tex. Let’s get started.
That’s right, one of the best things about being able to sew is we can make awesome gifts
for our friends. This was a fantastic gift that was given to me. Thanks, Val I absolutely
love it. This is a custom made cloth journal cover. You often see it over here on the set
at Man Sewing. One of my pieces of inspiration I have back there to keep me moving and motivated.
And like I said I was also inspired for today’s tutorial by thinking about those old brown
sack book covers. And with the brown sack book covers it started making me think, let’s
get rugged. What are we going to use that’s going to be awesome and rugged and last a
lifetime. And so I started using the Kraft Tex which is a fantastic fiber. It’s put
out by C&T. It comes on these big rolls so you have plenty to work with for any size
journal cover. Today’s video I’m going to break down how to make the cover and then
I’m going to talk about the applique. So you can do big or you can do something small
like that that you can keep in your purse or in your handbag, right? But I am ready
to make this background, let’s get started.
Ok I’m going to lay these steps out for you whether you’re making the small little
journal cover or the big journal cover. This math is kind of going to be generic and loose
so that you can follow along. I want to show you the finished parts so you understand what
we’re doing as we make the journal cover. So the first thing is I’m going to call
this back the spine. This is the outside spine or the skinny part of the journal. Also on
the journal we’re going to be making an inner sleeve that we’re going to fit there.
And then as I start to unpack this you’re going to also see that I have these two small
sleeves that come up from the bottom edges. And on this particular one I have stitched
around all of my applique pieces. So all of the stitching of the applique would be done
first before we do the topstitching that you see around the outer edge. So we’re going
to talk about that as we’re breaking this down.
So the first thing you need to do is take the journal, whatever size you’re going
to do, big or small and measure it. And once you measure it I want you to go roughly eight
inches longer and four inches taller than the journal itself so that you can make those
sleeves I just showed you. The first creases come from finding the center point of the
long distance. So mine happened to be 26 so at 13 was my center point. And that center
point is actually the middle of your spine. So when I lay this on my center point I happened
to measure about an inch and a half worth of spine. So ¾ on either side. Sorry about
all the math, I told you it would be generic. Ok, so we just want to make a crease big enough
for our spine. And when I’m making my creases what I like to do is I like to use my ruler.
And I fold it first up against my ruler like yay. And then as I fold it all the way over
I take the blunt end of an object like my rotary cutter. I make sure that I’m lined
up on both sides. And then I give a nice press, making sure my blade is always covered of
course when using it that way. And you want to make sure that you’re only making the
creases you really want. The creases will always show over time. So we want to make
sure we’re accurate as we do those. So you have a crease on either side of the spine,
ok? Then the next creases I actually do is I actually am going to come up an inch or
well I’m sorry, I said make it four inches so roughly two inches from the bottom. And
we’re also going to come up roughly two inches from the top. And I want to point out
here, if you look really close, my cover is slightly larger than the journal itself. And
we’re going to need that because when we topstitch we’re going to do basically a
quarter inch or a scant quarter inch around. So we’re buying in that distance, ok? And
then the other folds are made by keeping your spine in the contact there of the cover and
finding where these edges go. Those edges you also going to want to have about a quarter
inch on either side. So that you can make sure that it folds open and closed nice and
easy like yay. And that we can also topstitch around . So you want to make sure that the
journal cover itself works perfectly before we do any of our decorating. Now Kraft Tex
is awesome because you can decorate in a million different ways.
Now of course when it comes to decorating you can paint on the Kraft Tex. You can use
sharpie markers or those cool acrylic paint pens. You can even decoupage regular fabric
down. That’s kind of where my mind started with this. But I thought I want to make applique
using Kraft Tex as well because it comes in all of these really cool and mountain like
colors for our mountain or our nature scene today. So go ahead and zip down into the description
below and print yourselfs out the printables. I want to point out we have two pages for
you. We have the trees and the moon. And we also have the mountains and the snowcap. They’ve
been reversed or transposed so if you’re using this with fusible web and regular fabric,
it’s already backwards for you. As well as when we trace onto our Kraft Tex, all of
our markings will be on the back so we don’t have to cut so perfectly.
Now let me show you what I’m talking about though when I say markings. Here you can see
one of the cutouts from our large tree, right? And what I did in order to get that cutout
set up on there is I simply took a piece of my old fashioned wax paper, right? And I set
it between the layers where I also had my big tree. And I’ll just do this real quick,
making sure it fits, right? And then I like to use a red pen so I know where I’ve already
traced around. And you want to put some good pressure down. So you’re just going to come
in here and you’re going to trace around that tree or whatever design you’re doing,
right? Anything that you can draw or that you can print out that’s a free piece of
clipart or something, you can create an applique from. And I’m not even worrying about the
lines right now. I’m just giving you the idea of what I’m doing because I’m not
even looking at where I’m tracing right now. And the fun part is if you look at our
printable really close, and I’ll show you in a second when I’m done with my red lines.
But the negative space that comes from where you were working is also part of the design.
And I’ll point those pieces out in just a second. So once you’ve traced all the
way around your tree. And I used the red so I could see where I’ve been working. It’s
going to come right through like that onto your Kraft Tex. And from that point all you
have to do is cut out the tree and you have one of your appliques already made.
So I said I would point out in the description, on the bottom of our printable that has the
mountains, that extra part there I added in so it could be saved in for these rocks below
kind of finishes the tree off real nice like that. And then also you can see we kind of
had a half tree and the half tree comes from this dotted line area over here. And then
it’s kind of the negative space so you only really have to cut it out once and it makes
two trees. And any scraps that you have or any negative space that you have of course
you can use to make other parts of your design as you’re being creative on your own.
Now let me show you how I lay these out as we walk through this, ok? The first thing
I like to start with and I pointed out, I’ve already transposed or flipped the design so
that all your marking is on the back so you should have nice clean images that is coming
down without any markings showing there. And so I start with my mountain range. And I put
it almost at about half in the middle of the journal there. And then I’m going to bring
in my snow caps for my mountains just like that. And then my large tree I kind of start
and I kind of place it near the bottom. When I do my topstitching I can catch some of these
things at the bottom and so, as well as I can trim before I do my topstitching. So like
these parts that are hanging off, no problem. And then I’m going to take my half tree
and I’m going to set it over here. And I’m going to take my other tree and I’m going
to set it kind of on the front. And then this little set of extra rocks is used to cover
that up just like that. And then of course if you want it to be a fun nighttime, I would
put the moon in there. And I like to keep my moon opposite of the big trees just to
kind of keep the weight and the balance of the journal cover looking nice.
Now I want to show you the two different ways that you can apply your applique. So if you
want to topstitch like I did here. And I will say, I love to free motion machine quilt and
I think I’m pretty slick at it. I did struggle a little bit and the reason was is because
of the, the needle itself was kind of going nice and slow to stay in, going through the
Kraft Tex but also stay on target. So use a sharps style needle for your free motion.
Take it nice and slow. And if you’re going to do the free motion work, because of the
way it’s going to fit inside of the sleeve, you need to do all of your sewing first and
then do your top sewing of the edge. So all of that stitching is down in there. Hopefully
you can see that nice. So all your topstitching, all your free motion quilting around your
applique first. And if you are sewing it down I’m going to recommend strongly you just
use the lapel stick. The lapel stick is a nice bond but it’s not going to put a bunch
of thickness there that we’re going to have to put a needle through later. And if you’re
doing that you’re basically going to just take and apply it to the back side of your
trees or your mountains or whatnot. So it doesn’t take much. And you actually don’t
even need to get it all the way out to the edge. You’re just holding the body of that
down, ok? So I just have a little bit of glue up and down the center there. And then I would
come back in and I would press this down like yay. And I’m going to hold it in place for
a little bit. And I might even weight this down a little bit before I do any of the machine
sewing.
Now if you don’t want to do the machine sewing and have yours turn out like this,
and it is a little bit more rigid and stiff because I’ve used the glue. This here is
my fabric fuse that I love so much. Now it’s got this tiny little applicator tip. So when
you’re using it what you might want to do is put your glue down and know I’m being
risky doing it right on top of the journal here. But we’re going to put our glue down.
And because it’s going to run a little bit I’m not putting it right up to the edge.
And I’m using a very thin bead. But I do want to come out into these little tips a
little bit so it will hold down nice over time. If you wanted to take and use the actual
tip itself and spread it out so that we don’t have a big glob or goo ball that is in there
that’s going to squish out when we’re done. So we’re going to get it out to the
edges. And what I did because I wasn’t sure, I like the stitches, I wanted to hold it in
place. Is I made my sample piece here and then like I can literally not tear this apart
here. So this glue is fantastic. And if you get it all the way out to your outer edges
of your applique pieces, it will hold forever. Just like your journal cover will hold up
forever.
Now our very last step we need to do to also secure the outside pieces is we’re going
to do our topstitching. So I literally just started basically in one corner. And I came
and I topstitched all the way around the perimeter obviously catching the pieces that were along
the side so those were trimmed first. All the way back around to my start point. And
that also helps secure the inner pocket that we’ll use to slide our journal inside of,
right?
So now that you have that all set up, you can keep your textbooks nice and clean for
the longest time as you bounce back and forth from your locker to the cafeteria out to the
quad to hang out with your buddies and being part of your clique and everything. And I
tell you what, Wait is that what I hear? Is that the bell? Class is dismissed until next
week here at Man Sewing.