Try It Out Tuesday : A Simple Lutradur Journal Cover.

Well, simple was what I was after...and I think I've achieved it.  This is the kind of journal cover you can knock up quickly as a gift for someone.  I had a journal lying around, well, several, actually, having intended to make journal covers for my Etsy shop.  So, I took a small one, and, in a fit of enthusiasm, measured it for a cover.  I decided to have an approximate 2.5cm overlap front and back, so simply took a cloth tape measure, and, starting at the back, inserted it into the journal, allowing 2.5cm for the back flap, then measured around the book from back to front,finally adding on another 2.5cm for the upper flap.  Are you with me?  It looked like this... and gave me a measurement of 29.5cm.  Sorry, to those of us who work in inches; it's a lot easier to measure this kind of thing in centimetres...but you can see that that's roughly twelve inches.

Then, I measured top to bottom, finding that the book measured 15.5cm, so I added 1cm top and bottom, making a total of 17.5cm.  And then... I totally ignored the measurements, and did everything by eye.  Well, it's just not my thing, all this careful measuring... but for those of us who like working that way, what I should have done at this point, was to cut a bit of lutradur 100 or 130 to that size, and worked with it.  As it happened, I worked with a piece that was a bit bigger, as it was already coloured, and I thought it would make a good journal cover (we'll make another one from scratch on Thursday, and I'll try to stick to the measurements, okay?). 

So... I positioned my slightly too large cloth around the book, as if it was covering it.  That let me see just how the front and back would eventually look, and I positioned it carefully to maximise the impact of the pattern, trimming it as I did so.  This image was taken about half way through the process; I was able to cut away the nasty marks in the top right hand corner, as there was sufficient height in the piece to allow it.  I then carefully pressed the creases for the flaps, so that I could easily see them.

Now for some stitch.  I machine stitched the four corners down, and tried the fit out on the book.  Too neat.  So... I took it out and did it again, using a scant seam allowance of roughly a quarter inch (who says you shouldn't mix your measurement scales?).  I wouldn't have done that with a cloth that would fray, but it's fine on the heavier Lutradurs, which are strong enough to tolerate it, and which won't fray in any case.  Finally, I zigzagged along both long edges, making sure not to overlap the original stitching.

 It was at this point, I realised that I really should have measured... the flaps are too short in this version, about 1.5cm.  So, I used double sided tape to hold them in place; glue would have been just as good.  Remember that book covers are usually glued down, and there's nothing wrong with doing that.  
With hindsight, I'd have liked my inside flaps to be about 3.5 to 4cm...but that's for next time. 

This is an ideal process for trying out journal making with printed Lutradur that you might have lying around.  Next, we'll look at creating a themed journal cover from scratch.