Fun with Felt - Felt Flower Notebook Cover

This is the tale of a lonely little felt flower and its journey to find friendship with other little felt flowers and a home on a notebook.  :o)

Once upon a time...

Long, long ago in a far away land (well, January in my living room) I decided to learn how to make felt flowers.  I tried a few different patterns and one of them was this cute little flower from Feeling Stitchy.  The only problem was that I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it.  So it sat in a little box patiently waiting for me to find my inspiration. 

Then, while I was searching around the internet for ideas, I came across these cute felt notebook covers.  I have said it before and I'll say it again...I love felt!!  It makes every project so much cuter!  And, a whole project made out of felt??  It's almost too much cuteness!!! 

I knew I could probably figure out how to make a notebook cover on my own but decided to find a pattern to use for my first one.  I found this pattern at Craft Stylish and thought it was pretty fantastic so I decided to start there.  I love the little pen holder!  Plus, it had buttons all over it!!!!  Have I mentioned that I like buttons?  Oh yeah.  I have. 

I thought this would be a good pattern because I would learn a new sewing technique as well.  I learned to hand sew a blanket stitch!  I really don't know how to do any kind of hand sewing so I was excited to learn.  The pattern had a link to a great blanket stitch tutorial at Future Girl.  It was really helpful!  I kept getting confused about how to end the stitches but I got a little help from my mom and finally figured it out.  I'm so excited that I learned something new on this project!!!

This is my practice piece.

I loved the idea of having the buttons on the front but I wanted to try to make it my own.  I thought about it for a while.  Then I had a light bulb moment and remembered my lonely little felt flower!  It would be perfect for this project!  So,  I made two more flowers to give it some friends and drew some leaves (I cannot draw...urgh!  But I think I can handle a couple of leaves.) and cut them out of felt.  Then I went through my button stash and found three little white buttons that were perfect for the middle of the flowers (and to attach them to the notebook cover, of course).

There was a great tip in the pattern about how to attach the buttons (or flowers, in my case).  Glue them down with fabric glue and let it dry before you sew the buttons.  This will ensure that you end up with the pattern you designed when you sew them onto the fabric.  So smart!

If  I do a cover with flowers again I will probably use embroidery thread to sew some little lines on the leaves or something.  They seem kind of boring.  I ended up just hot gluing the leaves on so they wouldn't fall off.  Regular fabric glue wasn't working so great to hold them permanently. 

Then I just followed the pattern.  It was pretty simple.  It took me some time because I had to learn the blanket stitch.  But once I got that figured out it was easy peasy! 

I think it turned out pretty cute!

I needed to give a little extra room for the notebook.  It's kind of a tight fit.  I was a little worried for a minute when I started to put the notebook in there.  EEKS!!  But, in the end, it worked out okay.

I will definitely make more of these in the future.  They are so fun and easy to make!  I already have an idea for what I will put on the cover for my next one.  Of course, I will still be using lots of felt and lots of buttons! 

I think I'll keep this one just for me.  It's going to be my blog inspirations book where I will keep track of all my ideas for future projects and posts for the blog.  :o)

And the little flower lived happily ever after.

The end.