handmade felt covered pocket-size journals

nuno-felt covered pocket journal      

Lyn

Annie bought a little pocket journal, shown below, at Bovey Tracey Craft Fair in June.  It was made by Louise Cottey (Woven Textiles) and it's delightful!

The covers are made from handwoven material wrapped around boards and inside is a concertina of thick drawing paper. I ooo-ed and ahh-ed over it and I was disappointed when Annie failed to offer it to me!  So I decided to make one for myself.

For the covering, I made a thin piece of nuno felt using two fine layers of hand-blended merino wool from three colours (mustard, gold and spring green) and I topped it with a piece of material cut from an old blouse that was sourced from my favourite fabric shop a.k.a. the charity shop.

I cut two rectangles of white mountboard 10cm x 8cm for the covers ... then I hit a problem.  The thin felt was too thick to fold around the board!  So, using PVA glue, I covered the boards with the nuno felt then trimmed the edges.  I made the raw edges firm with watered down PVA glue.

Shown below are the two covers and a close-up of the lovely texture achieved with the nuno-felt.

To make the inside, I cut two long strips from an A2 size artist's watercolour pad (160gsm).  The strips were cut to 9cm wide to allow for the covers to overhang the paper.  Then I scored each strip at 7cm intervals to make neat concertina folds as shown below.  A special scoring tool isn't necessary - the back of a dinner knife will do just as well.

To join the two strips of paper together, I applied double-sided tape between sides 'A' and 'B' as shown below...

...then I stuck the first and last 'pages' of the concertina to the mountboard covers using double-sided tape.

To finish, I made a cord from 2 lengths of fancy embroidery silk.  Here's a good tutorial for making cords from Textile Arts Now blog.

I'm very pleased with my journal but I wanted to make another without the mountboard edges showing, so I cut two rectangles of felt 9cmx7cm, then using an iron-on adhesive (like 'Heat 'n' Bond'), I stuck each one to a piece of very thin poly/cotton material that would be easy to wrap around the mountboard.

The felt has a scrim base, two very fine layers of white merino and silk tops.  The photo below shows one piece of felt stuck to a piece of thin poly/cotton material.

I used turquoise thread to apply free-motion stitching to them both and I used an embroidery hoop to hold the poly/cotton taut to avoid wrinkles. Then I placed the mountboard underneath each piece of felt so that the felt was central - you can see how thin the poly/cotton is because my ironing board cover is easily seen through it!  

I secured the sides of the poly/cotton onto the backs of the mountboard with double-sided tape, but I left the corners free. 

One by one I pulled the corners taut then ironed them flat - carefully avoiding any contact between the sticky tape and the soleplate of the iron!

I covered the untidiness on the back of the mountboard with pieces of thick stabiliser (as used for making pelmets) but thick card would have worked as well, then I stuck the covers to each end of the paper concertina.  

And here's the finished journal with its handmade silk cord.