Craft Modern Notebooks: Tear, Bind, and Stitch with Embroidered and Recycled Papers

1. Craft Modern Notebooks Intro: Hi, my name is Becca. I'm a full time working artist and I work in a micro studio in Minneapolis. I work primarily in fabric and paper, so I do everything from designing my own fabrics to creating three D paper sculptures. I use a lot of embroidery in my work because I love the way it adds a three dimensional texture to my designs. In this class, we're going to combine two of the things that I love, a little bit of, bookbinding, creating some paper notebooks with some embroidery on paper. So I'm going to teach you two different stitches that we'll use to make a decorative cover for our notebook. I chose these two stitches because they look very different, but they have a lot of things in common. So it makes sense that you'd be able to mix and match them in your project. I'm also really passionate about making art, making something that everyone can do. So I'm going to show you some of the real bookbinding tools to do our project, but I'm also going to show you some DIY alternatives. That are things you might have just in your junk drawer at home. Everybody should be able to make art. In the next lesson, I'll tell you a little more about our project, which are making these ledger style notebooks. And I know you'll be so excited. You'll want to gather your materials and get started right away. 2. About the Project: Our class project is to make a ledger style notebook like these. You'll learn how to cut down the cover to tear the inside pages. And you can make those out of drawing paper, graph paper, lined paper, recycled paper, whatever makes the most sense for you. You'll learn two different embroidery stitches to add embellishment to your cover. This adds some texture and a very cool design element and it's fun to stitch on paper. You get to design your notebook in class. So whether you want to make a larger size one, a miniature, create a design that uses recycled materials like these ones. You get to make all the choices to make the notebook that you want to, Whether you want to keep track of lists, make a sketchbook, write your favorite quotes, you get to design the notebook that you want to use. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the materials and tools you'll need to create your project. So let's jump over and get started. 3. Materials & Tools: Okay, let's start by talking about the tools and materials you need to make your project. I want to start with tools, and the very first one is you're going to need a ruler. A 12 inch ruler should be great for this project. And I really recommend that you get this kind, that's a metal, like an aluminum ruler that has cork on the back of it. We're going to use this not only to measure, but we're going to use it as a straight edge so that we can tear down some paper, which is, I think, a really fun and cool skill. You really need a metal edged ruler to do that, I recommend you find an aluminum ruler if you can. The next tool you're going to need is a bone folder. If you have ever done any bookbinding, you might have seen a bone folder. The traditional tool looks like this. I have a fancy one that's got some things carved on it. They in this shape, you use this for putting creases in paper. If you don't have a bone folder, no worries. If you can find a popsicle stick, that makes a great alternate tool. I said I would talk about the professional tools and the DIY tools. Here's a great example. Either a bone folder or a popsicle stick. You will also need an all. Now this is my favorite. All that I use for all of my bookbinding projects. It's made from stainless steel and it just has a thin sharp point. I can use this for punching holes in paper. They come in all kinds of different configurations. Sometimes they have a big wooden handle or a metal one. Again, if you have an all awesome use that if you don't. Another great alternative is to find a push pin. They use these on bulletin boards. You've probably seen them before, but they have a nice sharp point and something that you can hang onto. I just found these at my local target. You can use a push pin if you don't have an all to punch holes to make your books. You will also need a needle. And really any needle will work for this project. They make specific ones for bookbinding. And that's what this one is. It's a long one. It has a large, you can use a bookbinding needle, but you can also use an embroidery needle. That's what this one is right here. And it just came from the craft section of my local craft store. In the embroidery needles section, you can get a whole package or you can use a small tapestry needle. That's what this one is. This is used for like weaving in ends. If you're a knitter or something like that, this one has a large and a blunt point. You don't need your needle to have a sharp point because we're going to punch holes using the alls, so you don't need the needle to do that job. The only thing about your needle, and you should notice that about these ones, is these are all about the same size. You want your needle to be about the same diameter, the same thickness as the thread you're going to use. And I'm going to talk about the thread next. When choosing your needle, you want to keep in mind we're going to use thread to do two things on these books. We're going to embroider the covers, so you'll learn some decorative embroidery stitches. But the way the books are also held together, you're going to use the same thread that you embroidered with to do the binding. And I'll pull one over here just to show you this thread we're going to use to do the decorative stitching and the binding here at the top. The thread I'm going to recommend for this class that you use is called pearl cotton. You can find little balls of pearl cotton like this in your craft store with like embroidery floss. If you've seen six stranded embroidery thread used for cross stitch, there will also be pearl cotton like this in the same section. I really like the kind that is labeled number eight, that's the size of it, it's a little bit thinner, but many craft stores also carry size five which is just a little bit thicker. Either of those will work. These are both the same kind of pearl cotton thread. It just comes in different formats. So you might find a spool like this, you might find one that looks like this. You might find it in a skin, just in a like loop of thread. All of those will work. The reason I want to use pearl cotton is because it will work for both parts of the project, both the embroidery and the binding at the top of your book that holds it together. Okay, so you should find a needle that is about the same thickness as the thread you're going to use. And that will help you decide if you have a needle that's too big or too small, it should be about the same. Okay, That is one more tool. You also will want something when you're punching holes that you want to push your all into. Now you'll notice I have on my desk surface, I have just a self healing cutting mat. I use that to protect my desk, but we need to punch through a lot of layers of paper and so it helps to have something that has a little bit of thickness that you can punch your all into. My favorite thing to use, this is a piece of just really thick felt. I got it from a place that makes drink coasters. This was like one of their samples. It's just really thick felt fabric. That's my favorite to use, but you also can use, this is a piece of kids like craft foam for doing goofy little craft projects. But it's about a four of an inch thick and it's just soft. I'll be able to push my all into it. You could also use just a scrap of corrugated cardboard that's got a little bit of thickness. This is just regular like box cardboard that you could just cut a little piece and that'll give you something that you can push your all into. One last tool you'll need is something to cut. We're going to use this to cut the cover paper, so you could use a pair of scissors, which will work great if you have one. An exacto knife, just a simple one like this that you can use along with your ruler that you've got. Or my favorite cutting tool is it's a larger kind of box cutter sort of knife. But I like this one because I really like the way I can hold onto it. It has a good handle on it, a cutting tool of some sort like that, so that we can cut down our cover pages to the right size. The other thing you'll need is materials. And I'm going to move a few things out of the way here so we can talk about those. The first thing to think about is the paper you want on the inside of your book. This is going to make the pages. I can show you a couple of examples. This one has some brown paper inside. This is just brown craft paper from a paper bag. This version has just a computer paper that was recycled from something. So you can see it's got some printing on it. These were patterns that I used for another class, so I just recycled that into the inside of this one. This version has drawing paper inside. The first kind of paper you want to think about is what works for the inside of your notebook. And this is where you can kind of think about how are you going to use this and what makes the most sense for you. I brought some examples just to talk through with you. On top here is just some lined like notebook paper from a little notebook. That would work great. This is some graph paper. I had a graph paper notebook. I love using this as inside drawing paper. You can get a tablet of just regular drawing paper. This is just a really basic one that came from Target that has just some kid friendly drawing paper. You can also get drawing paper of varying qualities at an art supply store or your favorite craft store. Here's a bigger sheet of just regular lined notebook paper. You might like having a lined notebook, so that would be great. You could use computer printer paper. That's just a plain piece of printer paper if you like colored paper. This is a sheet of kids construction paper. It's nice and lightweight and it comes in fun colors. So that could be a great alternative. Then that very first book I showed you is the pages are made from a brown paper bag. I just used the brown craft paper to make the inside pages. This is by no means all of the ideas that you could use, but you can see you want a lightweight paper that is something that makes sense for however you want to use your notebook. If you want to draw, you might want a drawing paper. You want to keep track of lists or checklists. Then a graph paper might make sense. One of those options, that'll be the inside paper for your book. Then you'll also need to have a paper for the cover. There are a lot of different options for the cover paper also, this wants to be a little bit thicker and hopefully you can see this is a little bit thicker and stiffer paper. These two examples here are like art paper I got from the art supply store. They're meant for drawing or printing. I'll put a couple of names of these kinds of papers. You can find specifically these ones in the resources handout for this class. This is a paper made by Canson. These two. This is just some card stock from the scrapbooking section at my local craft store. It's just scrapbooking weight cardstock. This is a really great choice. I use this a lot. This lighter brown, this creamy colored one, is also from the same place. It was a larger sheet of scrapbooking paper. From the scrapbooking section, you can use art papers like this one that's here. This is just a booklet that I've had forever of art papers that are these just heavyweight colored papers? These all work. Awesome. Then the last one, this one's a little bit harder to find, but it's actually my favorite for doing these notebooks from. This is a paper called Craft Text. It's made so that it's a hybrid between paper and like if you've heard of Tyvek envelopes, they use with USPS all the time. It's really flexible. You can bend it, you can stitch it, you can do all kinds of things. It also is really durable. Here's a notebook that's made with that, and you can see, I can't tear this paper. And it's super flexible so that it doesn't get creases. And that kind of thing makes it great for a notebook that you're going to carry around in your bag or something like that. The really neat thing about notebooks made with this craft text paper is you can actually reuse the covers. The paper is so kind of durable and sturdy that when you're done and you've filled up everything inside, you can actually just clip the strings that you've held your book together with and put new pages in and stitch it back up and re use the covers. Craft text paper is easiest to find online. I have found your local art supply store might carry some again, I'll put it in the resources handout for this class of some places that you can track down and get some graph text paper. The last thing you will need for your project is you'll need a piece of graph paper. And I have a piece here that just came out of a notebook. I'm also going to put a blank sheet of graph paper in the resources for this class that you can just print out on your home printer. We're going to use the graph paper to help us lay out the holes that we need to do our stitching. And this is a really easy way to do it. All right, so that is everything you need for tools and materials to do this project. I will all of the different alternatives I talked about in the handout. So if you want to refer back to get specific things, hopefully will be easy to do that. So in our next lesson, we're going to plan out the size and shape of our book. So you should take a few minutes and decide what kind of paper you want to use, because that will help you make some decisions about the size to make your pieces. 4. Designing Your Notebook: Let's start by talking about the size and shape you want to make your book. These books I think work at the best. If you think about them as a long and narrow shape, it might be that you think about your notebook being vertical. It could be that you use yours horizontally. That's where this shape of book gets its name. Is this horizontal shape resembles the check ledger books that bankers and accountants used to use, and that's why they call it a ledger book. These three books. The height of the cover piece, and we'll talk about that one first. The height of the cover piece is about three times the width of the book. And it doesn't look three times right here. But that's because the cover is one piece that's folded over. We're actually looking at half of it right here. But the full length of that cover is about three times the width. So for instance, this book is about 2.5 " wide. And so the piece, the pages that I cut for this would be about three times that high. So that would be about seven a 2 " or close to 8 ". It doesn't have to be an exact three to one ratio. So these three books are all about that three to one ratio, where the height is three times the width. This is the style I like to make, this is the one that I do most often. But you can change that up a little bit. So if you think about it and you'd like a book that's kind of more square shape or a little bit shorter, that kind of shape, that is totally up to you. So the ratio of these ones, this might be two times, the height, might be twice what the width is. This might be a piece that's 3 ", and the height of this might be 6 ". This one is almost square, so it's probably pretty similar to that. This might be 2.5 by, maybe not quite three times that. It might be by two times that or 2.5 times that. Okay, so thinking about what shape you want to make your book. For the examples for this class, we're going to make one that is this size and shape. Because I think that's a great example and it works very well to make from standard size pieces of paper. If you have like regular computer paper or something that you've torn out of a notebook that you're using, this is a great size notebook that you can make from those pages. Okay. Once you have decided a little bit about the size and shape of your book, I'm going to leave this one here as an example. Then we can talk about the size and shape you need your pages. The inside page for your book is going to determine the whole size of your book. This one is the size that we're going to use in class. It is two a 2 " wide and it's 8 " tall. That is what I've decided is going to be my interior page. And this is going to get folded in half, so that's going to make the finished size of our notebook. Okay, The cover, this turquoise piece will be our cover page. The cover actually wants to be just slightly taller than your pages because we don't want the pages to stick out the end. We want the cover to cover them up completely. The cover piece is going to be the same width and this one is wider. I haven't cut it down to be the size of my pages yet, so it'll be the same width as my pages, but I'm going to add a quarter of an inch to the height. If my pages are 2.2 by eight, my cover will be 2.5 by 8.4 Okay, I'll put all of those measurements up on the screen so that you can jot them down on a scrap of paper. Or you can pause the video so that you can remember what those are going to be. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to cut down your cover and your pages to create the pieces that you need to make your notebook. I'm going to use the Exacto knife and my ruler to cut down the cover paper because the heavier paper works better to cut than to tear for the interior pages. I'm going to show you how to tear down the paper using your metal ruler. For a couple of reasons. I really like tearing down paper like I find it very kind of fun and enjoyable. Much more so than cutting a bunch of things with a razor blade. But when you tear down the paper, you also get a fun, organic edge. It is like a deck edged paper. And I'll hold this up to the camera kind of close so you can see you get this sort of n edge on the pages. And I just really like the way that looks. I think it adds a really kind of cool, artistic, handmade sort of looking element to your books. So in the next lesson, I will show you how to tear down your pages so that you can get that deckled edge if you want to add that look to your notebook. 5. Tearing Down Pages: Okay, let's start by tearing down the inside sheets for our notebook. For this example, I'm going to use just this medium weight drawing paper to make my interior pages. And I have a little notebook of this drawing paper that's six by 9 ". I'm going to just pull a few sheets of that out of the notebook so I can move that aside. We will talk about our pages. In the last lesson, we talked about the example book I'm going to make for this is 2.2 by eight inch pages. You might have different measurements. If you've decided to make a different sized notebook, you'll have to keep that in mind as I'm showing you this example. This piece of paper that I have is 6 " wide by 9 " tall. I'll be able to get two pages for our little notebook that we need out of each one of these sheets of paper. Now you can do this tear down step in two different ways. You can mark your measurements with pencil and use that to line up your ruler. Or if you have a cutting mat like this that has a grid marked on it. You can use the grid lines to be able to line up and tear your paper. I'll do an example each way depending on what tools you have to use. Okay? I want to tear my sheets down so that I have that torn edge. Look on all the sides of the page. I'm actually going to tear off a little bit on the top and bottom, and on both sides of this paper. I'll start by doing one where I'm going to mark it. I know that 6 " wide. It's just a little bit shy of 6 " wide. Actually, when I put my ruler down there, I want to get two pieces which are 2.5 " across out of this. If I take off about a half an inch on either side, that's going to give me 22.5 inch pieces, which will mean 5 ". Okay. I'm going to come in and take off a half an inch. I'm going to a half an inch. I'm going to move my ruler and mark a half an inch down here fully. You can see those pencil marks. Okay, I'm going to measure a half an inch over from the other side because I want to take a half an inch off of each side. There's a half inch mark and a half inch mark. I'll make this one a little bigger. Maybe you can see it there. Okay, I always make two marks because I want to line up the edge of my ruler with the two marks. And if I have two, then I can make sure that I'm not crooked on the page, that I'm tearing a straight line. Okay, so I'm going to start with the marks that are on the right hand side of my page. And I actually like to take my ruler for this step and flip it over so it's upside down that the metal edge is touching the paper. It seems backwards, but I feel like it tears better if you do that. Okay, I'm lining up the edge of my ruler with the top and the bottom marks that I made. I've got my two pencil lines and I'm just lining it up carefully there. Okay. When you line up to tear like this, you always want to pull the piece of paper that's smaller. I'm going to pull off this little edge piece. The larger part of the paper is down on the table and I'm going to pull with my hand the smaller piece. Now, there's not really much of a trick to this, except that you always want to tear the paper going toward your other hand. I'm holding it down with my left hand. I'm going to grab the corner of the paper, and when I pull it, I'm going to pull in the direction of my other hand. I'm not going to pull straight back towards me. Hopefully, that makes sense a little bit. I'm always pulling it a little bit over to the left side because I'm right handed. That's how I'm holding mine down here. I'm going to do this slow and just demonstrate for you. I'm holding the ruler down tight against the table. I'm picking up this top corner. As I'm pulling, I'm pulling my hand so that I'm going over towards my left hand. And you can see how the paper is criss crossing over the ruler. This is the direction you want to pull the paper. You don't want to pull the paper straight back like this. You can see the difference in the shape I'm making with the paper. I'm always pulling it towards my left hand and I'm just going to keep going all the way down the page and tear that strip off. It happens very often. You can see I have a little bit of extra paper. Didn't tear quite cleanly on the end, I'm going to ignore that because we're actually going to tear off this end of the paper, so I'm not going to worry that there's a little bit of extra paper there. Okay. When I pick that up, you can see now I have this torn edge on that side of the paper. Okay? Now I want to tear down the little strip off of the other side. I'm actually going to take my paper and turn it around because again, I want the large part of the paper down on the table. And the small part of the paper is what I'm going to pull towards me. I'm going to line up my ruler with this side with my two pencil marks. I'm holding it down tightly with my left hand. Pick up the top corner and I'm pulling towards my left hand crossing over. And just a slow, smooth, steady pull all the way. Okay, there's my two edges. Now I can tear this piece in half. And I should have two pieces that are 2.5 ". Okay, I'm going to measure and mark that. I could have marked that all at the same time, but I like to do a re measure. Okay, There's a towards the top and one towards the bottom. This one I'm making two exactly equal pieces. It doesn't really matter which one I leave down on the table. I'm going to line up with my pencil marks, hold it down. Then same thing, I'm going to pull from this top corner. I'm pulling across my hand there, I've got a nice, neat piece. Okay, now we have two pieces that are the right width. Now we need to make them the right height. Okay, these are 9 " right Now I need to tear them down to 8 ". I'm going to take a half an inch off of either end. And that way I'll have the torn edges on both ends of my paper also. Okay. Same thing. I'm just going to measure a half an inch in from the end. I also make two marks here, even though it's a really short piece. Okay, I'm going to line up my ruler, grab this corner, and pull on the shorter ends. It's really easy to forget to do that crossover motion, so this is a reminder. All right, I'm going to flip it around and take a half an inch off of the other end as well. Mark a half an inch. Line it up, and you can see that little bit that was extra I'm just tearing away so I didn't even have to worry about it. Again, remember to cross over and not poultry straight towards you. Okay. This piece is now the size we need for our pages and we're going to fold this, so it will make two pages in our notebook. So I'm just going to set that one aside. I'm going to take a half an inch off of the ends of this piece. So I'll measure this 11 more time. And just measure a half inch in a half inch. Drop my ruler, remember that you're pulling across. Okay, and then last one. Okay. There are two pages you want for this notebook. Ideally, somewhere between probably 6.10 pages. If your paper for the inside is really thick, you might want fewer pages. If it's a really thin, lightweight paper, you might get away with a few more. I think I'm going to do eight pages because I pulled four bigger sheets out of my notebook. I'm going to do one more example here for you. I'm going to use the grid lines on my mat to cut down the next paper, to tear down the next paper. But I'm going to do it in the same order that we did the other one. Just so I can demonstrate for you, I'm just going to line up my paper on the grid lines on my mat. And then use those grid lines with my ruler. Instead of measuring because I have a half inches on my Matt, I can line up my ruler here with a half an inch. Okay. And then do the same thing. I don't have to mark it because I'm using the cutting mat markings. One nice smooth pull all the way back. Okay. I'm going to take a half an inch off of this side. I'm lining it up with one of the lines on the mat. Okay. Now I'm going to tear it in half. That's at the 2.5 inch marking. I'm just going to carefully line my ruler up with the markings on my mat. Okay. Then again, I need to take off just a half an inch on these ends. So I'm going to carefully line it up with the markings. And again, I'm turning my paper around because I always want to pull on the piece of paper that's smaller and leave the larger part of the tape paper down on the table. Okay. So there's a finished page and one more. Okay. I'm going to tear down two more sheets of paper, but I'm just going to speed up the video. So I won't talk you through these, but you can just watch it quickly if you want to, or you can pause the video so that you can tear down the rest of your sheets and then we'll meet back when we're finished with those pages. Okay. So I have eight pages that are the size we need for our notebook. So when we fold this in half, that'll make 16 sheets of paper or 32 sides that we can have for our notebook. So these are ready to go and I'm just going to set them aside. I wanted to give you a couple of just notes before we move on to making the covers. You don't have to make all the pages in your notebook exactly the same. We were tearing down each one of these sheets. I could have chosen a different piece of paper for every one of these pieces. The other thing I wanted to mention was, I'm doing my example with six by nine inch drawing paper. That's not maybe a size that you have just around your house. I wanted to do one more example with a sheet of paper. A sheet of notebook paper, which is something you might have at your house that's a little bit more of a standard size. This sheet of paper is, it's about eight a two by 11. Yeah, that's a standard sheet of paper. I can tear down the same size sheets that we need from this paper just as easily, but it'll be a little bit different amount that I'm tearing down off of either side. You approach it the same way. I'm going to take my ruler and say, okay, how many 2.5 inch pieces can I get out of here? The first thing I want to do is tear off like the ragged edge. And in fact, I don't want the holes either. I'm going to just take off a little bit of that edge. I'm going to line it up with my cutting mat to do that, so that I don't have that part of the paper that I want to. Okay. Now I can just measure 2.5 " over from this torn edge that I made. There's 2.5 Okay. And it looks like I can fit at least one more. There's another 2.5 I might even get one more page. It would be just a tiny bit short, so I could decide this last one would be about a 16th of an inch too narrow. You might, you might not care either way. Okay. I would tear it down the same way. So then I need to make it 8 ". This is 11 right now. I just need to take off 3 " out of the total. If I want to make a torn edge on both ends, I could take an inch and a half off of either end. That'll leave me with some little sheets left over. You have to decide what the most efficient way to use your paper is. You might want to totally maximize it and try to use every bit possible. You might adjust the size of your pages depending on what you're using as your base paper. Or you might say, I want the size notebook I want. And whatever that turns out it is like, so. Okay, so there was an example of just tearing one down from a larger size sheet. Okay, so it's just all about measuring and deciding how much you need to take off to make the size page that you need. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about cutting down the cover page based on the size of our interior pages. And then we'll get set up to start stitching our design before we assemble our book. 6. Preparing Your Cover: Okay, now it's time to cut down our cover paper. You have your pages, and as a reminder, these are 2.5 by 8 ". We want to make our cover piece the same width, so it'll be also 2.5 ", but we want it to be a four of an inch longer than the interior pages. Then when we fold it over, that will let the end of the cover cover up the ends of the pages because it needs to be just a little bit longer. Okay, so I will need this piece to be 22 by 8.4 And I have this piece that's cut down from a larger one right now. But again, you might have a full size sheet that you're cutting this down from. Now one thing to think about when you're doing the cover, and I'm going to pull out one of these larger sheets to try and demonstrate this for you. You wanted to take a minute to look at your paper and decide what direction the grain is. So we haven't really talked about the paper grain yet, because with our interior pages we're using thinner papers. The paper grain doesn't really matter. Now, what is grain? Grain is the direction that the paper likes to fold when you fold a piece, especially of heavy paper. If you fold it in one direction, you'll notice that it will fold nice and smoothly, and the fold seems to fall into place easily. If you fold it the other direction, you sometimes get paper that cracks or crinkles. If you're folding in the direction of the grain, it's going to fold very smoothly. And if you're going opposite, that's when you get the cracks in the paper when you're cutting your cover using a heavier paper, you want to take a minute and see if you can determine if your paper has a really strong grain. Okay? And I'm going to use this piece of cream colored paper because I think it will have a direction that you can see. Okay? The way you decide which way the grain, the paper grain is going is you want to take your paper and bend it over and just bounce it. You can see I'm not folding it, but I'm just bending it over to see when I bend mine matching up the short sides of this piece. It only wants to bend about that far. If I pick it up and show it to you, okay? If I bend it the other direction, same thing. It wants to bend even farther. It's hard to show you this when we're across a computer screen from each other. But I can, when I do this and I fold this direction, the paper feels very stiff. It bounces back when I push on it. When I turn it and fold it this way, it feels much softer. And it feels more like it will fold easily. Okay? Where it feels like it's easier to fold. This is the way that you want to put the fold in the top of your cover. This folded edge is the grain direction of your paper. Okay, let's test it out. Well, I'll try this green piece and see if I can feel the difference. Okay, I'm going to fold it one way first, and it feels like it's pretty easy to fold this direction. Then I'm going to turn it and fold it this way. It's easy to fold in this direction. Okay, let me hold it up and see if I can show you that as I push it over this way, it wants to go about that far. If I turn and fold it this way, it wants to close up even more. It feels much softer. It wants to fold this direction, okay? So this is the grain direction of this paper. That's the way I want to have my cover fold happen. We'll do one more with this turquoise piece and see I'll try folding it this way. And I'll try folding it this way. Oh, wow. This one wants to almost not fold at all, going in this direction, okay? It wants the fold to be there, okay? If you can't tell the difference when you test out your paper, then you're probably fine. You can cut your cover piece either way, and it's going to work great. But if you can really feel a difference, it's very hard to fold one way or to bend one way. And it's much easier the other way. You want to work with that with your book. I know that this turquoise piece folds very easily this direction. This is where I want my fold to be. Okay? I know that I can cut my cover so that the long way is going this way opposite that fold. When I fold it in half, I know the fold is going to be really easy. It's going to fold really nicely. I hope that makes sense. Okay. So you're going to cut the long side of your cover going opposite your paper grain, because that's where your fold is going to be, is opposite the long side of your paper. Hey, I'm going to cut this one down. Now that I've done that little bending, I know that this needs to be 2.5 " wide because it's the same width as my pages. I'm going to cut this with my razor blade and a ruler because I know this paper doesn't tear Y easily. Very messy to tear, and it won't make a nice looking cover. I'm going to cut it instead. 2.5 " is right there. Okay. You can also measure and mark this with a pencil if you don't have the cutting mat. Okay, then the height of this wants to be the height of our pages plus a quarter of an inch. Our pages are eight, This wants to be eight and a quarter. I'm just going to turn it because I think it's easier for me to find the measurements there. Okay. And I'm actually going to mark this one because I don't have four inch markings on my math and that's all muff, so I'm just trimming off like a tiny bit of paper at the end. I had just enough for this cover and there's eight and a quarter the marks are a little hard to see on camera, but Okay. And line that up. That okay. So now I have my cover. The grain direction of my paper is going the same direction. I'm going to make that fold. And here are my pages and you can see if I line up my pages, my cover is just slightly taller. Okay. The last thing I need to cut before we're ready to start doing our cover is I want you to cut a piece of graph paper. Either from graph paper you have in your stash or if you've printed out the graph paper that's part of the handouts for this class. I want you to cut a piece of graph paper that's the same width as your cover. I need a piece that's 2.5 " wide. It doesn't matter how tall it is. Whatever size graph paper you have is great, but you want to make one that is the same width. There is 2.5 Okay? And then there's my piece of graph paper. We're going to use the graph paper to help us punch holes to do our embroidery, so we don't have to measure and mark everything with a pencil. This makes it a much faster way to do that. Then in the next lesson, we get to start doing some embroidery. 7. Punching the Stitch Pattern: Okay, we've got one last step to get our covers ready to do the embroidery, and that is, we're going to punch the holes where the embroidered stitches are going to come through the paper. I think it's really important when you're embroidering on paper to do this pre punching step. Because if you try to stitch it just with your needle going through the paper, it's really easy to bend or tear the paper as you make your stitches. And pre punching it will help you make stitches that look really good, that look really nice finished. Okay, so you have a piece of graph paper that is the same width as your cover. And we're going to use this to just help us place the stitches instead of having to make a bunch of measurements and mark all of those things. Because both of the stitches, we're doing work in a square. So we're going to do two different embroidery stitches. I'm going to show you in the next couple of lessons, and they're both based off of the shape of a square. You stitch them very differently, but the holes we need to punch will be the same. No matter which one you decide to use to create your cover, we'll do the same punching pattern. Okay, so we're going to do a pattern like this one that's on this notebook. As an example, I'm going to make a pattern of squares that are four across and three high. So we'll have 12 stitches. That'll go on the bottom edge of the notebook. Okay, So my notebook will actually go this direction, right? It'll be like this vertically. So I'm going to stack these two things up. Just so I can show you that I want to make my little pattern of stitches kind of down here on the bottom, um, edge of this. I'm going to move my cover paper out of the way because I want to draw this out a little bit. First, you could draw with a pencil. I'm going to use this brighter colored marker just because I think it'll be a little easier for you to see on the camera. So the first thing I want to do is find the center of this, because I want to center my stitches in the center of the cover. The fastest way to do that is you can either count the stitches or the grids across, or you can just fold your piece in half and make just a little crease mark there, right where the fold is. That's going to be the center line of my graph paper. Okay, So I want to put two squares on the right side and two squares on the left side of that center line. So I'm just going to take my pencil here and I'm just going to draw that center line a little heavier so I can see it. Okay. Now I want to space my stitches up from the bottom edge just a little bit because I don't want them to tear out if they're too close to the edge. So you can see here, I left just a little bit of a border. So I'm going to do mine about three of these grid squares away from the edge. Okay, I'll draw another pencil line. My bottom edge of stitching is going to go right, right in there. Okay? Then I want these to be Xs, big squares to do my stitches in so I can really see them. I'm going to use three grid squares across to make my box. Okay. This is the same graph paper that you have in the printable handouts for the class. These are 81 eighth inch squares. You might choose a little bit different graph paper or if you're going to use something you have or change the scale. But I wanted to let you know that's what the size of this graph paper is. Okay. I'm going to make my squares be three across and three down. I'm going to draw these in the blue pens so you can see it, hopefully a little better. And I'm just going to draw four squares here. I'm making three grid lines. I want it centered on the graph paper. Okay? There's one row with four squares. I'm going to do another row above that. Okay? And one more above. Okay? There is my pattern of squares that I'm going to punch to do a pattern like this when we stitch it. I'm going to use this now as a template to punch my cover. Okay, I'm going to match up these two pieces. I'm going to put the cover piece underneath. I'm going to put my graph paper piece on top of it. I'm going to make sure that I've got the sides and the bottom edge of it aligned. I'm going to hold it down with my left hand. Now I'm going to take my all or my push pin if you're using the DIY alternative. And I want to punch a hole at the corner of each one of these squares. I'm going to do this first pass of punching these holes just into this cutting mat, because I have it down on my table. And then I'm going to go back and make them a little bit larger using this punch pad that we talked about before. So I'm just going to mark them at this point. Okay, so I'm going to do all of the corners of this design that I drew out here. Okay, I'm going to zoom the camera down so you can see this as I'm punching it. I'm going to be very careful to make sure that I get it right on the intersection of the graph paper, Okay? And the only things I need is the corners of the squares. And I'm just making tiny little pricks enough so that I'll be able to see it when I move this graph paper out of the way. Okay, so I have punched all of the corners of that design. Now I'm going to pull the graph paper out of the way. And I'm going to hold this up close to the camera, and hopefully you can see a tiny little pattern of pin pricks. Okay, Now these pricks are not big enough to take my needle through for that I need to have something behind the paper that I can punch through and go farther through with my all. You can't really do that into a hard cutting mat like that. I like to go through and punch these over again, making the holes just large enough that I can bring my needle through. Okay. Again, I'll zoom down so that you can see this. But I'm just tracing back over and making my holes just a little bit larger. I'm pushing the tip of my all in just a little bit farther. Just large enough so that my needle will go through easily. Okay. There I have my grid of holes, you can see that, that are punched. And now this is ready to start stitching. In the next two lessons, I'm going to show you two different alternatives that you can stitch. You can watch through the videos before you decide which ones you want to stitch on your cover. You can do all of one. You can mix and match them together. You can decide which you like and how you'd like your design to come together. But we'll do the stitches in the next two lessons. 8. Woven Cross Stitch: The first embroidery stitch we're going to learn is one called the woven cross stitch, and this notebook is an example of that. I'm going to hold this one up really close to the camera so you can see this makes kind of a starburst looking stitch. One of the things I like about it the is that it is called a woven cross stitch. Because as part of the stitching, you do weave the threads over and under one another. It makes a really cool stitch. It looks especially neat when you do it at a large size like this, so you can see what it looks like. We're going to stitch all of the grid squares on this cover. In woven cross stitch, we're going to do a pattern just like this example notebook here. I'm going to start out stitching in a dark colored thread. I have pulled out three different colors here. You can do this all in one color. Whatever you want to do for your design. I'm just going to pull off a piece of thread that is about 14 " long. A great way to measure that if you don't have a ruler or something right nearby, is if you pinch the ends of the thread in your fingertips and you pull your elbow, that is about 14 ". So I'm just going to snip off that, this embroidery thread, pearl cotton, you use all as one thread. If you've ever worked with cross stitch floss like this, you sometimes separate those strands out. This one works a little bit differently. You leave this all together. I'm just going to thread my needle. I'm using a large embroidery needle for this. That was what I had here to use. A great way to thread this needle is if you pinch the end of the thread with your thumbnail. If I can get my camera to focus, hello, there we go. Pinch it with your thumbnail really close to the tip of your finger and pull it down S, then you can take the eye of the needle and just push it up against the tip of the thread. That is an easier way or an easy way to get your needle threaded. Okay. I'm going to pull a couple of inches of tail of thread through the eye of the needle then opposite end from the needle. I'm just going to tie an overhand knot. An overhand knot, if you haven't done one before, is basically just a simple loop. I'm going to take the end of the thread and loop it around my finger, just the tip of my finger. Then I'm just going to pop the loop off the end of my finger. Now I'm just pinching a loop there. Then I take the end of the thread and I'm going to stuff it underneath. And through the loop I've got just a little knot, like a pretzel knot there, then I can just pull it tight. This should be a big enough knot to pull through your paper. If you want to be sure you can tie a double knot, one is usually enough. I leave just a little tail. We can trim off the tail a little bit later, but then we're ready to start stitching. The reason I chose these two stitches that we're going to demonstrate is they look cool from the front. But you also know using this notebook, you're going to see it from the back. These stitches also look pretty attractive from the back. You can see that they make a cool thread pattern that way as well. Lots of reasons to love these stitches. Okay, we're going to start stitching this. I'm going to start at the top left hand corner square. And the only holes we're going to worry about to make this very first stitch are the square that's up here in the corner, 1234 holes. Those are the only ones we're going to worry about for this very first stitch. Okay. I'm going to start by bringing my needle to the back and I'm going to bring it through from back to front. And I'm going to bring it at the bottom left corner of that square. That's actually the second hole down over on the farthest left hand side. And you might have to peek from the back so you can get your needle right through the hole. And I'm going to just slip that through and I'm going to pull all the way until it stops at the knot. Okay, this stitch works in four parts. We're going to do four different passes with the needle to make up one woven cross stitch. The next part of the stitch, we're going to go diagonally across the square. So I'm going to go up to the top right and come down. Okay, so now I've made one diagonal stitch across. Okay, Now this is a cross stitch. Those look like Xs. So now we're going to finish one part of the X next, we're going to come back up again from the back at the bottom right corner. Okay, Again, I might have to peek on the back side. I get through the right hole. Now I'm going to come up at the bottom right corner, pull tell it stops and I'm going to cross over and go up to the last hole we haven't used. Top left and bring my needle down. Okay, we've made one X, you could stop right here. And just simple cross stitches. That's just a basic cross stitch, but we're going to do the woven cross stitch, which is like the next step. Okay, the first two stitches really easy. Stitch number three. We're going to copy what we did with the very first stitch. We're going to do exactly that same thing over again. I'm going to come up one more time at the bottom left. My knot is right there. I might have to just push the knot out of the way so I can get through the hole again. Okay. I'm coming up bottom left. I'm going down again. At the top right, we're doing exactly the same thing as the very first stitch. Okay, So now you've got two pieces of thread stacked up, one on top of each other, going in that direction. Okay, Next we're going to copy almost what we did with the second stitch. We're going to come up again at this bottom right corner. But before we go across and stitch down, we have to do the woven part of the woven cross stitch right here. I think it's helpful to just take your fingernail and push those two threads apart from each other. The two from the other part of the cross stitch. Okay, so you can see a little gap between them if you look at your stitch, and I'm going to try and hold this up really close to the camera, Hopefully you can see that those two stitches you made, one of them goes under the diagonal that's leaning towards the left. One of them goes over it, one is over, one is under. Okay, now I'm going to take my needle and I'm going to do the opposite of that. The last time the thread went this direction, it went under a thread and over a thread. Now I'm going to do the opposite. So I'm going to go over and then under, I'm just going to hold my needle up here so you can see hopefully I'm doing the opposite of what that last stitch did. Okay. And I'm going to pull that through. Okay. Then I'm going to finish this stitch by going down one more time in the top left corner. Okay. When I've pulled that through, I'll hold this up again. You've now got a woven pattern in the center of that X. I'm going to put a still photo up on the screen so that you can see this. Where I have stitched the two parts of the diagonal in different colors. And hopefully that will help you see a little bit more clearly where the threads are going. Okay, I'm going to put that up right now. Okay, now we're going to do another stitch. I'm going to talk you through these slowly for a couple of stitches so you can follow along. And hopefully it will start to make sense that woven motion is probably the hardest part of this whole stitch. Okay, the next stitch we're going to work in the next square over, we're going to move just to the right and we're going to work in those four holes. Next we're going to start by coming up in the bottom left corner, and that actually shares the space with the previous stitch. Okay, my needle is coming up there, going to go diagonally across, up to the top right and come down. Okay, now I finished the X. I'm going to go down to the bottom right, up to the top left. I've made the simple cross stitch first. Just the X. Okay. Now I'm going to copy what I did with that very first stitch. I'm going to do that one more time. I'm going to come at the bottom left. And go directly across to the top right. Now I have two threads that are sitting, one on top of the other. I'm just going to push them apart so that I can see what's going on. Okay, now I'm going to bring my needle from the bottom right up. Now I have to look at how the threads are crossing over. So that I can do the opposite thing, right now, my two threads that are stacked on top of each other, the first one is over, the second one is under. So now I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to go over and under, I'm going to slip that through. And then down at the top right. Okay, got a little twist laying quite flat. There we go. Okay, I'm going to keep going. We're going to work in the next square over towards the right. I start at the bottom left corner, I go across to the diagonal, and then I finish the X. Okay, I repeat that one more time. Come up, okay. I spread my stitches apart. So I can see that my thread going this way is doing the opposite thing as the last one through and stitch down. Okay, I'll do one more. I think I have enough thread to finish out one more stitch, so I'm going to move over, go across up. Okay, I'm repeating the very first stitch that I made. I'm coming up pushing my threads apart so I can see over one and under the other. And down in that last corner, I've finished one row of woven cross stitches across. I only have a tiny bit of thread left. I'm actually going to tie a knot before I start doing the next row of stitches. To do that, I'm going to flip my cover over to the back side. I think it helps to tie the knot if I unthread my needle at this point, but we're going to use the needle, don't put it too far away from you. We're going to start by just tying an overhand knot like we did at the very beginning. But I'm not going to close it up. Here's what I mean, I'm just going to take my thread, I'm going to make a loop around, and then I'm going to take the end of the thread and stuff it through the loop. I've just got a simple knot going right there. But before I close it up, I'm going to take my needle. And I'm going to let the needle help me guide this knot down so that it sits against the back of the paper. To do that, I'm just going to take the needle and stick it inside the knot. I'm just slipping inside that loop. I'm just going to push the needle down towards the paper. As I'm pulling on the thread, you can see how the thread is just sliding down and down. And I can actually pull the kn all the way tight with my needle stuck right inside it. And then slide the needle out of the way. Now my knot is right down against the back of the paper. Okay. Then I can trim off just a little tail. There is our very first row of woven cross stitch. We're going to continue and do two more rows the same way. I'm just going to start you with the first one on the next row so you can see how that starts. And then I will speed up the video to stitch the other two rows. Because it's fun, I'm going to switch colors. That I am going to do a gradient of colors, but again, you can use all one color for yours however you want to design your notebook. So I'm going to pull off another piece of thread and thread my needle. We will start this just like we started the last row. I'm going to tie a knot in my thread. I'm going to start at this square and it's sharing a couple of holes with the previous row. I'm going to come up at the bottom left corner, just like we did before. Okay, this is, we're just stitching this the same way, but some of these holes are shared by some of the other thread. Just be careful when you're putting your needle through there. There's a lot of pieces of thread going through some of those holes that you don't bend or tear the paper. Just be gentle as you go through. Okay, I stitch the first X. Then I repeat peaking on the back so that it can get right through the right hole. This first one is always hard because you're right in the way there. Out of the way. Okay, so I'm repeating that cross, bringing my needle up to the front one more time. Pushing my two threads apart so I can see so that I can work this thread going the opposite. Okay, now I'm just going to continue to work one to three more stitches on this row. And then I will do four stitches on this row. I will come back and show you how to tie a knot again, so we can repeat that to practice and then we'll meet back when we're finished. Okay, I'm ready to tie a knot again. One more time. I'm just going to unthread my needle. I'm going to start the overhand knot by just wrapping around my fingers and then taking the end through the loop. Okay, I'm going to take my needle, use it as a tool, and put it inside that loop so that I can push the needle down to the back of the fabric. As I pull on the end of the thread, got a tight knot around my needle and then I can pull the needle out of the way and finish down. Okay. And one last row of stitches along the bottom. Okay. There are the finished stitches on your cover, in the woven cross stitch pattern. In the next lesson, we will learn another stitch which works on the same grid shape. That's called the Bello stitch. 9. Sorbello Stitch: Okay. The next stitch we're going to do is called the Sorbellotitch. I have punched another cover exactly like the one that we just stitched the woven cross stitches on. So I use the same grid pattern exactly, but we're going to stitch a different stitch using these same punched holes. Sblloitloks like an X also, but it has this little pretzel knot in the center. This is a different arrangement of squares. For this one I did a grid of four squares by four squares instead of three by four. And they're a little bit smaller size, it makes a cool texture if you put them all close together. We're going to do this in exactly the same pattern as the previous one. And I'm going to stitch this time in this dark berry colored thread. We'll start it the same way. I'm going to cut a piece about the same length. I'm going to go ahead and thread my needle and tie a knot the same way we did with the other stitch where I'm going to start up here in the top left corner. And we're going to do the first square first. Again, the stitch only works using four holes. And we're going to do a pattern through those four holes. Fourbllo stitch, We're going to start at the top left, the very top left hole. We're going to bring the needle from the back to the front and pull until we stop at the knot. My knot pulled right through. I guess I need a double knot here. It wasn't quite big enough. I must have punched my holes just a little bit bigger. Okay. We'll try that again from the back to the front. Okay. The first part of this stitch, it works in also four steps. The very first step you're going to do is we're going to make one stitch that goes directly across to the hole that's on the top. On the other side, we're going to go from top left to top right and pull that one through. Okay. And this stitch and just this stitch, we want to leave this one the tiniest bit loose so you can see I'm not pulling it super tight so that it's laying like right against the paper. I'm letting it be just a little bit loose because we're actually going to pull this stitch during the next part of this stitch. Just a tiny bit loose. Not pulling it crazy. Super tight. Okay. Now I'm going to bring my needle up from the bottom left. Okay, And pull that through. Okay. Now to tie the knot in the center, we're going to make two slips with the needle around the top stitch that we just made. These are going to work exactly the same. We're going to do the same movement two times in a row. I'm going to take my needle. I'm going to go down from the top of the stitch and just slip underneath. Okay. Then I want to make sure that my working thread, the one that's coming out of the paper, is underneath the needle. That thread is just going under my needle. I'm going from the top down. Okay. Now I can pull this through. I'm going to pull, you'll see how the top stitch that we made is bending down. That's exactly what we want to have happen. Okay? So that you can see there's a little twist starting to happen right here. We want that to land in the center of the square. I want to pull it so that, that is in the center of the square. I'm just holding the end of the thread with my thumb so that everything doesn't come loose. I'm just pinching that between my thumb and my finger on the back. Just holding the thread because I'm going to slip underneath that top stitch. One more time, I'm going to do the same movement. I'm going to take my needle from the top and go down. I'm just slightly to the right of where I went before. Again, I'm going to make sure that the working thread is under my needle. Okay. The end that's coming out there is underneath the needle. Okay. Then I can pull through. When I pull through that second loop, it's going to tie a knot. I've got that not quite all the way closed up. I'm going to bring it really close so you can see if I just pull on it a little more, it's going to close up a half hitch knot. You want it to land right in the center of the square. Okay, then the last part of this stitch, you might have guessed, we're just going to go down in the bottom right corner. The last bit we haven't done there is one Sorebello stitch. I'll put a photograph again of this, a still photo of one really close up so you can see what it looks like. But it's an X with a little pretzel knot in the center. Okay, let's continue across. We're going to do the row going all the way across the top. This one again, we start in the top left corner. That shares a hole with the previous stitch. Okay, We're going to stitch one to the right. Go down at the top right. Okay. It's funny because the stitch doesn't look like this when you get done. Right. Okay. Now we're going to come up at the bottom left. Okay. Now I'm going to do that slip where we're slipping underneath that top stitch that we do that movement twice. I'm going to slip from top down and make sure that my working thread goes under the needle. Okay. And I'm going to pull through, I want to get the stitch to bend down towards the center. I'm going to just hold the thread with my thumb so I can go from the top, under that top bar and make sure that my working thread is under the needle. Pull, pull, pull. Which I'll close up the knot and then stitch down in the last corner. It takes a little practice to get your sore bello stitch knots to end up Right, exactly in a line. You can see my second one is just a little bit higher up. That's because I pulled that top thread just a little bit tighter. I'll think about that on my next stitch to remember to leave that one just a little bit looser. Okay, next stitch, we start again at the top left. I go across to the right. Okay. I'm going to remember to leave this one just a little bit loose. I'm going to come up at the bottom left, Pull it too tight. Okay. Now we're coming from the top and going down, the thread goes under the tip of the needle, pull through, hold it, do that again. From the thread is under the needle, pull there. That one landed more towards the center. And then stitch down K. Last one in this row, come up in the top left, go straight across, come up at the bottom left, go down and make sure the thread goes under the needle, pull through, hold it down from the top, thread is under, pull through, and then stitch down. Okay, see my last one, I made it a little tighter. Again, that's why my knots move up and down. Just a little practice will help you get those more consistent in the right or the same space. Okay, you can tie a knot here like we did on the other stitch, on the woven cross stitch, or you can make a stitch back over and start again on the next row. On the other side, I don't like to have a big thread that goes across the back just because it's easy to catch on something. I'm going to go ahead and tie my knot here. I'll flip it around. I'm going to unthread my needle. Okay, I'm going to make an overhand knot by making a loop, stuffing the end through the loop. I'm going to take my needle and put it inside the loop and just push the loop down as I pull and my knot closed up before I got all the way to the bottom. I'm just going to open it up again. I was pulling on it like too hard before I got the knot. All the way to the back of the paper there. That worked better. Pull it till I have a tight knot and then let go, pull the needle out of the way. Okay. I have enough thread to keep going for a few more. I don't need to cut another piece. Okay, once again, I'll start the next row. We do that part together and then I will continue to stitch across. Okay, we start again in the top left. It shares a hole with the previous stitch. Okay, first we're going to stitch across towards the right. Leave it a little bit loose. Come up at the bottom left. Sure, I've got enough loose. Okay. Now we're going to take the needle and come from the top and go down. You have another stitch that's under there. Just make sure you don't catch your previous stitch because I just want to go under that bar we just made. I want to make sure that working thread is under the needle. Goes underneath towards the right. Okay. And pull I'm going to hold that with my thumb just to keep it from popping open. And again go underneath and make sure that my thread is under the needle. Close up the knot. Okay. I'm going to continue and do the rest of this row, and then the final row of stitches, and we will have 12 sorbello stitches. And then we'll meet back at the end. Hey, there are your finish bellow stitches. And so I want to hold these two up so you can kind of see the difference there are the two different stitches. Now when you do your design, you can mix and match. You can do different rows and put these two stitches together. Here's an example where alternated sore bello and woven cross stitch. You can do something like that. This one I stitched in variegated thread. The thread changes color as you stitch. That's fun. There are lots of different patterns. We did the same grid pattern on both of ours, but you can do lots of different things depending on where you punch your squares. Here's one where I put it in the center. This one, they're just along the edge in one row. Here are some in alternating sizes. This example is, I put another piece of the same colored paper just to give it a little almost like a frame. And then stitched four Sobrello stitches through both layers of paper. Here's one where I just scattered them randomly by just putting my graph paper down and punching squares wherever I wanted to. That makes a more abstract pattern. You can mix and match your stitches however you want to. Then in the next lesson, we'll start to assemble our notebook and put the covers and the pages together. 10. Stitching the Binding: Now comes the best part. We are ready to put our notebooks together. I have the covers that we embroidered. I have the two different ones here. I'm going to work with this turquoise one for our example. Here are the pages that we tore down. Again, I have eight pieces that I made. For this book, you will need your needle and thread. You can use thread that matches what you used for the embroidery on your book, your bone folder, your ruler and your pad for punching holes into. Because we have just two more holes to punch, first thing we're going to do is get started with folding. We need to fold all of the pieces in a half. To do that, you just want to carefully match up the short end. I take a minute to make sure that they are as closely aligned as I can get. Then hold it down with my left hand. I take my right hand and just sweep backwards and then to one side and then push to the other side. That sets the fold initially. Then I'm going to grab my bone folder or your popsicle stick if you're using that. And I'm just going to reinforce the fold by pressing both directions on that. Okay. I started folding my cover. Now I'm going to do the same thing with each of the pages. There are lots of ways to make books. Some people really like to fold them all as a bundle. I like to fold mine as individual pages. It takes a little bit longer, but I like the way that I have a little more control over the folds. I'm just going to do the same thing I did with a cover. I'm taking each piece. I'm aligning the short ends I am holding with one hand and pushing back towards the fold and then towards the edges of the paper. I'm just making a stack here. I use my bone folder to reinforce each one. It just sets the fold a little sharper. It will help the pages stack together. When we do that step next, he got two more sheets, I think. All right. When I have all of my sheets folded, then for this book, we're going to stack them all, one inside the other, so that all of the folds are nested together. For different styles of books, you do this in different ways. But for this one we're going to put them all together. I'm just going to open up each one and I'm the folds inside, they're all layered together. I'm just lining up where the folded edges are. One more nested all inside one another. Okay. I will take just a second and make sure that all of my edges are aligned side to side. One thing you will notice is that the bottom edges of your paper won't quite line up exactly evenly and that's because the outside ones are going over more paper than the inside ones. You'll get a little bit of a taper at the edge. Hold that up close so you can see that that's as expected. And that is part of the reason we made our cover page just a little bit longer. The last bit we're going to take the cover and stack it on the outside of all of the pages. I'm going to put that fold up in there and tuck all of my pages inside. Same thing. I'm going to take just a second to push my edges and make sure that they're lined up on mine. You can see the little decal, the torn edge that we did sticks outside of the cover a little bit on the sides. That's totally okay with me. I like being able to see a little bit of it. Okay. Now that you have it stacked together, you want to hold onto this tightly and make sure that the pages stay up inside the fold. Now we're going to punch holes to be able to stitch the top edge. On my example books, I like to put the hole a half an inch from the side and a half an inch from the top. And we're going to make two holes, one on either side of the book. I use my cutting mat to place these. I think it's a little easier to be able to line up everything. You also can just measure these and mark it with a pencil. I lay mine down on my cutting mat just aligned with one of the lines. And you can see I have a half inch markings on my Matt. Then I'm going to take my ruler and I'm also going to line that up with a half inch from the edge. Okay, I now have a half an inch here because I'm using my cutting mat to show me where that line is. Now I can measure it in a half an inch from each side and I'll know exactly where to put my holes. We're going to do this the same way we punched the holes for the front. I'm going to make just a marking and then I'm going to pull over my mate and punch through all of the layers. Okay, I'm coming in a half an inch and I'm a half an inch from this edge and I'm going to make a mark then. Same thing here. I'm a half an inch and a half an inch from the edge and make a mark. Half an inch is the measurement I'm using for this book. You can do different sizes depending on how large or small your book is. If you are making one that's like my tiny miniature example, which is right here, you might only go in a quarter of an inch to stitch that one. Okay. So that measurement is up to you. Now that I have two little marks, I'm going to move my whole stack again, making sure that nothing is shifted and that I'm keeping all the layers together. I'm going to move it on top of my punching pad. Here is where you have to use just a little bit of extra pressure because you want to punch through all of the layers of paper. Here, I'm going to line up my all. It's not too hard to punch through, but it takes just a little bit more effort than punching through just one or two layers. Okay, I have punched both of those, and hopefully I can see it's come through for the back. Okay, Next we're going to stitch, we're going to stitch this in two parts. There are two sets of stitches that go along the top side. Here, I'm going to get another piece of thread. You want this to be long because we need to tie this in several knots that will take up some of the thread. I'm going to stitch this one with a double layer of thread at the top because I like the way that thickness of thread works. And it'll be a little bit extra strong because there's a double layer of thread. Okay, I'm going to cut a piece that is about 24 " long. Looking at my cutting mat that goes all the way side to side on my cutting mat, that's about two feet. I'm going to thread my needle, and I can use the same needle that I used to do the embroidery. When I thread the needle, instead of tying a knot like we did previously, I'm going to pull the thread through so that it's doubled up in the needle, the center of my thread, the eye of the needle. And then I have two ends down here. We don't need to tie a knot, but you just need to match up the two ends of thread. Okay, I've got a doubled thread here. Okay, The stitch on the corner works in two steps. I'm going to start on the right hand side and I have my needle with my doubled up thread. The first thing I'm going to do is bring the needle down from the top down to the bottom. So I'm just going to go through the hole and I'm going to pull that until I have about three or 4 " of tail left over. I'm not going to pull it all the way through and I'm just going to lay this thread so it's going towards the top, towards the spine of the book. Second part of the stitch, we're going to bring the thread that's coming out of the back, around the side so that we make the stitch that goes around the side edge of the book. I'm going to take my needle and I'm going to go down again in the same hole. The only thing to be careful of when you do this part of the stitch is you want to use your needle to push the threads out of the way. You don't want to split the threads as you're stitching through it. Just wiggle your needle to make sure you're going down beside them and you're not just splitting right through the threads. Your hole should be big enough, otherwise you can grab your all and make it a little bit larger. I'm going from the top down again and I'm going to pull that through. As I pull this through, you can see there's a loop on the side here that I'm going to tighten up. So I'm going to keep pulling until it lays down, going parallel to the spine fold. And the thread is coming out of the backside. To finish this, we're actually going to make now this tail and this tail make the top part of the stitch. The stitch looks like an an L shape. We're going to tie these two ends together. So we tie a knot right at the top. I'm just going to cut the thread. So that I don't have my needle attached to it. Now I want to make a square knot at the top spine of the book. If you've not done a square knot, the best way I remember how to do it is as your threads go right over left and then left over right, you're doing the opposite. What I mean by that is I'm going to take the right thread and go over the left one and bring the tail through. I'll pull that down so that the knot is going to sit right at the fold, at the spine of the book. Then I want to do the opposite of that, this time my left thread is going over and tucking through the loop. And I'm going to pull that down and have two stacked right on top of each other. Right at the top of the book. Okay, I'm going to leave these tails long for just a minute while we do the other side. The other side works the same way, we're just working opposite. So I'm going to grab another piece of thread, again about 24 " long, and thread my needle. Then once again, I'm pulling it all the way through the needle so that I'm matching up those two ends together. So I've got the thread doubled up. Okay, now we're going to stitch the other side of the book. We start by going down through the hole. I'm going to leave about three or 4 " of tail. Then I'm going to come around the side and go down through again. Just being careful to move the threads aside and not stab through any of those threads. I'm going to until my thread up at the side, that loop. Okay? And then I bring the two tails up to the top. We'll tie one more square knot. Okay, one more time. So I'm going to start by going right over the left thread and pull that down to the spine of the book. And then left over right. Let's tighten that up. Okay, That is the spine stitching for our book. You can see that is holding together all the layers. So now you can open up your book, you can flip the pages and it's all held together. You can finish the top of this in a bunch of different ways. When I originally learned this book, the design that I saw, they took all of these tails together and tied them in one big overhand knot together. I'll do that on this example. I'm just going to gather all the threads in a bundle. And I'm going to tie one more knot by just looping around my finger. Then I'm going to stuff all the ends through the center. That's just called an overhand. Okay? Then I'm going to pull those and try to get the knot centered. Okay. And trim my extra threads. This style of book, the design that I saw for this one was that then you can use this little loop as a way to hang the book up. You could write, for instance, like some of your favorite quotes or poems, or maybe even a shopping list. This little bit at the top would let you hang it up on the wall like on a hook, otherwise it's just decorative and fun. There are lots of ways that you can finish it. You can also just off the tails and have 2 knots with tails that just hang out like. So that's a way to finish. Here's another example where they're tied together at the top, so that makes like this little loop. You can add beads to your design. I think this is really fun. So here are two examples where I added some beads to the tails before I trimmed them off and then tied in a knot. So this one has some little beads on it as well. I embroidered a second cover because I did one with the Srebrello stitch and one with the woven cross stitch. And I tore down some pages that will fit with this one. So, I'm just going to finish up this book. I will speed up the video so you can just watch me do all of the same steps we did for the first one, but with the second example. Okay, so there's my second book finished off for this one. I tore down some colored paper that I put inside. This is just kids construction paper. And I decided to do it in groups so that the red pages were on the inside and the purple were on the outside. Just for fun, this one I tied as two separate knots and then just trimmed the tails to leave those a little bit different. Look for our second book, that's all you need to finish off your notebook. In the very last lesson, I want to show you a couple more examples of great ways to use recycled paper and different materials that you can use to make some really fun books. 11. Inspiration & Wrap Up: So to wrap up class, I want to just show you a couple more ideas for things you can do with your notebook now that you know all of the steps. So we've made some kind of basic notebooks with embroidered covers, and I think those are the most fun because I really love that embroidered touch. And embroidering on paper is fun. But you can also use recycled materials to make you don't have to embroider them. Here are two great examples. This one with the ladybug on it was a calendar from last year. Decided to recycle. It was made from a heavyweight paper. I cut a piece of that and use that as my cover. This one you might recognize is made from Materios box. Lightweight cardstock will also work. I would say a cereal box is about the heaviest you really want to try and stitch through. But I put all kinds of different kids colored paper in here, so I thought that made a really great, you could carry this in your purse thing to keep kids entertained. Somewhere, you have a little coloring book. Those were great examples that are made exactly the same way, but you can use all kinds of different materials to make your design. Do you want even more inspiration? I know that you will have awesome ideas for how to personalize this project. So be sure to check the project section down below to see what other people have done. And don't forget to add your project photo so we can all see the great ideas that you had. So I hope you had fun making ledger style notebooks. And you learned two really cool embroidery stitches as well. And that you'll come up with ways to combine those in all kinds of different ways. Thanks for joining me.