Journal cover

I had an old quilt in my stash to find a new use for. I made it many years ago and it hung on my bedroom wall for a long time but I was never really happy with it. The colours of the diamonds in the middle were the wrong tone (they should have been darker) and I thought it looked odd. I made a new quilt and then put the old one aside to use later. I can't seem to throw away things I have made but I am prepared to cut them up for a new idea. Now is the time for something creative...

I laid the pages of my journal that have already been stitched together on top of the quilt and found I could use the top portion with the gold stars for the cover and the rest would be saved for something else. I cut the quilt to size. Earlier in the week I was given a paper lined foil bag at a pharmacy and I really liked the feel of the bag so I put it on my desk. When I saw that next to my quilt it became the perfect inside cover for my journal. I stitched the two items together with a few lines of straight stitching.

I gave the foil a light coat of gesso to cover up the store name on the bag.

Next I cut the bag slightly larger than the size of the cover so I could use the edges to form a border around the edge.  I sprayed the inside cover with various dye inks and glimmer mist sprays to add colour. I had to give the paper a light coat of varnish to protect the inks because they were rubbing off and would have marked the first page of the journal.

After this step I decided to add some extra lines of stitching to hold the layers together more. I folded the paper over to the front of the journal and stitched it in place using blanket stitch and gold thread. I realised I had forgotten to put the stiffening in between the two layers. Oh well, mistakes happen. It would just be a soft cover instead of the hard cover I had imagined. I finished off the front cover with some ribbon, then a couple of swipes of gesso and paint. I used scrapbook letters wrapped with thread for the title. I stitched the journal pages inside and added some gold charms to the spine of the book.

The letters are glued on with Scotch quick-dry adhesive that I have found will stick a lot of different surfaces together quite strongly. I have never had anything fall off so far...

I am quite happy with the new purpose for my old quilt.