fat quarter friday {fabric scrapbook tutorial}

This week for fat quarter friday I wanted to share with you a little fabric scrapbook that we just put together for Grammy for Valentine's Day. I love this little book and it was so fun to put together with the kiddo's. I wanted to make the book extra special for Grammy so I had my little guy draw some hearts, x's and o's and write Grammy's name. Then I traced his little letters and objects onto some minky fabric and sewed them into the fabric. I also had the kiddo's do a little finger painting and added each of their hand prints to the book. These little books will make great gifts and you can customize them any way you want and for whoever you want. Get creative with them and embellish away!

Fabric Scrapbook Tutorial

(allow at least 2 hours for total project)

Materials Needed:

*Fabric fat quarter or fabric scraps

*plastic (I recycle mine from those bags sheet sets and curtains come in. But you can also buy plastic at JoAnn's)

*embellishments (buttons, ric rac, ribbon, fabric scraps)

*photo's

*iron-on stabilizer or flannel

Cut the following:

four pieces of fabric 8 1/2" x 6 1/2"

two pieces of fabric 18" x 7 1/2"

Cut one piece of stabilizer or batting 18" x 7 1/2"

Of course you can make these books any size you want. Just make sure you make the larger pieces ( the jacket of the book) 1/2" bigger then the (pages) on all sides.

Cut the pieces of plastic about 1/2" larger then the photo on all sides. You want to allow enough room around the photo's to sew onto the fabric without sewing through the photo's.

Place your photo's where you want them to be on the fabric. Now take a piece of plastic and lay it on top of the photo's.

*If you have a teflon foot for your machine you may want to switch to it. It will make sewing over the plastic easier.*

Sew around the plastic.

Repeat for the remaining pages. Add as many photo's as you want. And place them where you want. Get creative with it! There is no right or wrong here.

Grab your embellishments and embellish the pages. Since I was making the book for Grammy, I had my little guy draw some hearts and write Grammy. Then I traced his letters onto scraps of minky fabric and sewed his letters in. I also had the kiddo's do their hand prints and cut those out and placed them underneath some plastic instead of just using photo's.

Once all of your pages are embellished, it time to assemble the book. Line up the pages exactly how you want them to be in your scrapbook.

Take two of the pages and sew them wrong sides together. I sewed mine together using a simple zig-zag stitch. Serge them if you have a serger or you can just leave them as raw edges too. Remeber, no right or wrong way here. Repeat for the other pages.

Gather the two larger pieces of fabric (book jacket) and iron the stabilizer onto one on the pieces of fabric.

Now place the two pieces of fabric together with wrong sides facing. Stitch around the sides again.

Now you have the jacket of the book. Fold it in half, and iron the folded edge to crease it.

Take your pages and line them up in the middle where you made the crease.

Fold book closed and sew folded edge. I would sew in about 3/4."

And that's it!

Easy, and so adorable! I love the frayed and zig-zagged edges. It's one of those perfectly imperfect gifts.

I love seeing his letters sewn in fabric.

And his little hearts.

Since this was a gift for Valentines Day for Grammy I added a little printed card from here in with their hand prints. And the little printed tags on the outside of the book that we also used at Valentine's Day came from here.

Happy Valentine's Day Grammy!

This was such a fun and easy gift to make. I'm sure anyone would love to receive on of these. The kiddo's are already begging for one of their own.

**Please feel free to use this tutorial for your personal sewing projects. You may link this to your blog and use any photo's. Please be kind and give credit where credit is due.**

Any questions or comments please do not hesitate to contact me. If you make one using this tutorial, please add it to my flickr group. I would love to see it and you just might see it featured on my blog one day!