Embroidered Folio Journal with Stitchery Kit - Eileen Hull's New Sizzix Dies!

Well, it's taken me all month but I finally finished my embroidered Folio Journal! Eileen's new Folio has SO many possibilities! I wanted to try making a "soft" journal sewn out of fabric and Pellon Ultra Firm Stabilizer. It worked! Take a look…

I had the perfect piece of vintage lace to use on the cover!

The Folio pockets hold thread cards and a needle book.

I used vintage tea towel embroidery patterns to stitch my pages:

I added some stitch sampler pages too!

Here's a better look at the 'pocket parts'.

Let's check out the construction:

Step 1 - For the covers, first I cut two pieces of the Pellon Stabilizer (14" x 6") and fused my outside and inside printed fabrics onto each side. (Forgot to get a photo of that.) I then cut my front and back covers.

Note the piece of lace I had in my stash that
was the perfect size!

At this stage, I also raided by button stash and sewed vintage buttons onto the lace.

Step 2 - I sewed the covers together at the spine, stitching back and forth several times for strength.

Next I zig-zag stitched around the edges to give it a more finished look and to make sure the fabric wouldn't fray on the edgers. I also stitched one side of the pocket bottom pieces into place.

Step 3 – I had to stop and ponder the proper order of the next steps. ;-) First I attached the ring binder hardware, and then the lace (which would have been in the way of stitching the binder clip). I knew it would be easier to tack on the lace with stitches before the pockets were folded over and sewn so that's why the lace was next.

I used strong thread and hand tacked the clip into place
with several stitches.

Step 4 – Now I could sew the pocket bottoms in place. I used a strip of super tacky tape to help hold the tab in place while I hand stitched it.

Stitching the edge was a bit tricky. I definitely needed a sharp needle and a thimble to get through all those layers. Not bad for a first effort though.

PART 2: The embroidered pages

Step 1 – I found these vintage iron on tea towel patterns at the thrift store.

I actually scanned the patterns I wanted to use so I could size them to fit on the pages. I wasn't sure if the old iron transfer ink would still work anyway. However sizing in my computer worked perfectly. I printed out the pattern and used a light box and a FriXion pen to trace the patterns onto the fabric. The pen has heat sensitive ink so for a final step I lightly passed my iron over the finished pages to make the black pen marks disappear like magic!

Here are all my finished embroideries, ready to be
made into pages.

Step 2 – I used the page die from the Folio Page, Pocket & Flowers Die Set to trace out where the page edges should go on all the stitched panels. I did some careful pinning and made a sandwich of panels with quilt batting in the middle, then stitched around the page about 1/8" in. After that I trimmed the pages on the pen lines with my pinking shears.

Step 3 – Last step was to put eyelets in. It was super easy using my Crop-A-Dile. I even had the right size eyelets in my stash!

I guess the last, last steps were to make the matching needle book (see a similar one I made here) and the thread cards. The thread cards were cut from mat board using Eileen's Trinket Box Die front. Tip for the bunnies: I cut them out of Sizzix Surfacez White Texture Roll. It is a very durable fabric type paper like the old Paper Leather or Kraftex. I did this so the bunny arms wouldn't rip off when winding and unwinding floss around the cards.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my LONG post. Be sure to keep an eye on Eileen's blog because April 7th is the Release Party for her Chapter 2 Sizzix Dies!

Supplies used:

Dies:

Eileen Hull Sizzix 

Folio Journal  ( Sizzix / SB ) 

Folio Page, Pocket & Flowers ( Sizzix / SB )

Trinket Box #662360 - retired (this was just discontinued so if you want one, track it down asap!)

Needlebook #660767 - retired

Floral Arch & Words #662357 - retired

Sunburst & Waffle embossing folder set - retired

Tim Holtz Sizzix

Carrot Bunny ( Sizzix / SB )

Other:

fabric

vintage lace

vintage buttons

embroidery floss & supplies

quilt batting scraps

Crinkle Ribbon

matboard

Sizzix Surfacez - Texture Roll, White

Pellon Peltex 72F Two Sided Fusible Ultra Firm Stabilizer

Pilot FriXion Erasable Pen - black, heat sensitive ink

Tim Holtz Idea-ology Ring Binder LG (TH92914) - discontinued

Some links in this post are affiliate links which do not affect the price you pay but allow me to earn a small percentage of a sale. Thanks! (My husband also thanks you!) If you shop at Topflight Stamps, use my coupon code LISAHOEL for 12% off your order.

Folio Journal Embroidered Stitchery Kit
by MonalisaH -Lisa Hoel
Scrapbook.com