DIY Book Sleeve

The Journey of a Joy-Filled Book Sleeve Creator

I have seen these book sleeves all over Instagram. They looked pretty nifty but I never thought of using one myself before today. I was watching a new to me Flosstuber (a cross-stitcher who posts videos on YouTube) and she spoke about how she used these cool and very trendy book sleeves to hold her cross-stitch projects, especially the smaller ones.

I thought that was genius!

The Flosstuber's name was Joy.Filled Stitcher. Thank you for introducing me to that. Much appreciation to you.

There was another YouTuber whom I can't remember the name of who used small zipper pouches that her friend designed on Etsy. Those were cool too. They had the gal's artwork of animals on them. Super cool and ultra cute!

So, last night I thought I would try and make one of these myself. I searched YouTube, as you do when you want to do something yourself and I watched a few videos about the process.

It seemed easy enough. I am not much of a sewist but I do have an ancient sewing machine that does a pretty good job when I need it to. After watching I got to work. Mind you, I only have the fabric I needed, but the foam wasn't something I normally keep in my stash. I substituted sticky backed craft foam. The type I had wasn't the right size, obviously, so I put two together to get the job done.

Instead of fabric on the front I used a cute, Thanksgiving themed hand towel from Dollar General. They are out now in the DG's near me. I can't believe Thanksgiving stuff is out already. Heck, what am I saying? Christmas stuff is out too!

I hacked the towel apart and cut up my fabric for my lining and got to work. I think my end product turned out pretty good. Since that was my experiment version, I want to try and create a real one with all the right ingredients. I might even try to whip up a quilted version and see how that turns out.

All that matters is that I had fun and I now have a cool book sleeve to keep my books in.

If you are into crafty things, try making one for yourself.

-- Toni