One of my favourite projects to make when I need a gift for a friend, is this hand embroidered project - the pattern is Friendship Notebook Cover by the Australian designer Gail Pan. I'd originally purchased this pattern several years ago from Coast and Country Crafts and Quilts here in the UK. The pattern includes a full size traceable stitchery design, and instructions for making this simple notebook cover. It's very simple to enlarge it to cover whhatever size notebook you want to use. This stitchery design has been traced onto a piece of background fabric designed by another Australian designer, Lynette Anderson. I've used a fine nibbed Micron Pigma pen (nib size 005, in a pale brown colour) and fused a piece of lightweight fusible interfacing to the wrong side of the background fabric. I've used a selection of Valdani variegated stranded embroidery threads for the hand embroidery. This design uses very simple embroidery stitches...
...once the embroidery panel was completed, it was pressed, trimmed to size, then added to scrappy panels that I'd made using a selection of 1" strips of fabric also designed by Lynette Anderson - these were leftovers from another project, and were too pretty to throw away! Once the scrappy panels were joined to each side of the hand embroidery, they were layered up with a piece of fusible wadding, such as Vliseline H630. I've quilted this very simply, but it could equally be quilted using the quilt as you go method, thereby constructing and quilting the panel at the same time...
...I've detoured from the original instructions for the construction of this notebook cover, and used my own tried and trusted method. Once the panel is completed, it's trimmed to size, and the 2 sides are neatened with a strip of binding. I've also enclosed one of my labels too. The cover is then constructed, forming 2 slip pockets to enable a notebook to to be enclosed. The notebook can easily be removed, once it's full up, and replaced with a new one...
...this shows the front of the notebook cover with a notebook tucked safely inside. I've made several of these covers, and this particular cover is one of a group that I've made for some very special friends.
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