My friend over at Studio MME recently sent met this Lyle the Crocodile notebook as a thank you for helping her with some WordPress tweaks. I thought it would make the perfect purse notebook, but I didn’t want to watch it get all beat up clunking around with my keys and junk. The solution? A vinyl pouch!
Conveniently enough, I found a nice piece of vinyl on the remnant rack at JoAnn’s a few weeks ago and used that for this project. Other supplies you’ll need are: a pencil, good fabric scissors, straight pins, a milliner’s needle, some sturdy thread, and a magnetic closure.
To be honest, I wanted to develop a custom pattern based on a vest worn by Sean Bean’s character in Game of Thrones, but to do so, I knew I’d need to make up the pattern as I went along. I’m no pattern-maker, but I did work at a baby boutique (no babies are sold there, just baby stuff) in a past life, which means I can wrap a mean baby shower gift. I cut enough fabric to ensure that all sides of the notebook were covered and then some.
Using some chalk, mark any excess fabric you’ll need to trim to achieve the shape shown. Make sure to leave enough seam allowance for a seam down the center of the pouch and for wrapping paper-like seams at the top and bottom.
You can snugly wrap the vinyl fabric around your notebook and pin it in place. Then, set your notebook aside. Whipstitch the two short ends of your rectangle piece of fabric together as shown.
Next, whipstitch across the bottom of your pouch. Then secure the left and right sides of the bottom with even more whipsitching perpendicular to the bottom seam. The bottom seams of your pouch should look like the letter “I”.
Moving on to the top side of the pouch, whipstitch all the way around the raw edge that’s left. If your magnetic closure is a little bigger than your notebook, like mine was, trim it to the size you need. Then, sew or attach the closure to the pouch. Attaching it depends on the type of closure you use, but you can see how I did mine below.
To close my pouch, I fold in the ends and the magnetic closure secures it much like the tape would on the wrapping paper for a present. I’ve been running around for weeks now with my Studio MME idea notebook/vinyl pouch, and so far, it’s surviving! If any of you have other ideas about how to tweak this idea or try a different closure, leave a comment and let me know. :)
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