october: mini of the month

sewn tag book

inspired by kelly's sewn mini books i wanted to challenge myself to create a mini book that was completely sewn and not glued.. and one morning last week about 3am this idea came to me and i thought i would do a step by step instructions just to remember how i did it and of course to share with you guys. 

here is the paper for the main pages i used

cut with rounded corners

when i make this book again.. there are a couple things i would change 

the 1st thing i would do differently ~ would be to not fold the pages but to cut them to the finished size but we'll talk more about that later..

this time i folded the pages and this is what the looked like

each page has 2 sheets of paper

cut to 

p1. front ~ 5x12

p1. back ~ 5x12

p2. front ~ 9x12

p2. back ~ 9x12

p3. front & back same page ~ 12x12

you could have as many of the ~ 12x12 sizes as you wanted to

i made only 2

all the pages laying down on top of each other

the 1st page you fold as 2" from the left 3" from the right

the 2nd page you fold as 4" from the left and 5" from the right

the next page is folded in half at 6"

this page is 4" on the left and 5" on the right

sew outside of page 1/4" from edge DO NOT sew pages together!

this is something of what it should be looking like

then i sewned down the middle
this is (as i mentioned) the part i would change.. (i think)..

ok,  this is where we're at..
the edges are sewn individually and then sewn together in the middle

i thought i would throw in there that i did this while watching the nanny...
one of my favorites! "she's the flashing girl from flushing.. booom boom.. the nanny named fran!"

anyway...

once all that is done.. sew out from the middle seam "pockets"

another view

yet another view..
ya following here?

once all that is done to each sheet..
i sewed the binding together

binding..

then used binding tape on the inside of each page

this is what it looks like closed
the 1st page of "pockets" are 2"
the 2nd page 3"
the 3rd page 4"
the 4th page 6"

once pockets were created i ripped back the edges

cut tags to fit and placed them into the pockets

this is what it looked like

another view

the whole book
(no glue)

to complete the look i tied a ribbon around the book
and now i need to figure out what i'm going to do with the book..
i just wanted to create a book that was completely sewn together..
i never thought of what i was going to do with it once it was done!


tell me what you think.. would you try and make something like this?