Journal Cover

Recently I was invited by a friend to attend a craft class at the home of a friend.  She and I had attended a couple of quilt shows together and were introduced to the work of Angela McIntyre of Laughing Cat Designs Etc. 

We loved her work, so my friend decided to have a class in her home.  There were four of us and Angela for the Saturday class.  We took our machines, and supplies to make our own refillable Journal Covers!  For the sake of time, we made small covers for 4 X 6 inch spiral notebooks, but this same technique could be used on larger notebooks. The class price included the pattern and instruction.

Here is the selection of fabrics that I chose to take with me to my friend's house.  Not the best selection; I will tell you why later.

I was interested in the class, because Angela uses some techniques that I wanted to explore, mainly curved pieces and couching. Although, the curved pieces are not pieced together like normal quilting, they are sewn with an overlapping seam then covered with couched yarns.  If you look close, you can see the yarns are twisted and sewn down over the seams. (Check out the seam on the right side of the pink fabric and you will see several layers of yarn in different colors.) On the other side of the pink fabric, I used some twisted metallic thread and then layered on a lavender tatted trim.  This couching was done after the different fabric pieces were sewn together and quilted to a backing.  You can see some different colored stitching, besides stitching styles.

But, we were not finished yet.  All of this was further embellished with beading.

Angela gave us some tips on using invisible thread for beading.  Looks pretty good, uh?  Well I finished m little journal cover and I love it, except that I used some fancy ribbed satin fabrics that were a bit too thick for the cutting instructions. The extra bulk cause the cover to not fit correctly.  So I cut down the notebook's cover, and made it fit!  As you can see, the pages stick out a little beyond the cover, but I don't mind.  When I buy a new journal,  I will buy a 3 X 5 inch notebook and I think it will fit!   Other than that, I love my cover!

 Thanks, Ritha, for hosting the class!  

P.S.  I added a little ribbon to hold it snug.