speaking of sewing journals...

...a couple of weeks ago i mentioned that i'd been commissioned to make a whole bunch of them, which was pretty awesome! melissa and wendy of SEWN in mill valley, california, had seen the little mini ones in my etsy shop, and asked me to make ten of those for them; as well as ten bigger (5x7") sewing journals. i'd never made as many as that at one time, but i was up for the challenge! turns out, when you make it into an assembly line type of process, things move pretty fast. i glued up, trimmed, and put in order all the page blocks for the small journals first:

then i made the covers, and my awesome bindery assistant (aka lovely husband jeff, lol!) helped me make them into books:

want to guess the most important tool for making these? the bind-it-all is indispensable, obviously; and my xyron is very helpful, too. but the very first thing you need for this sort of project is a mortise mask in each of the sizes you'll be making.

basically it's just a frame. you cut a hole in a sheet of sturdy index stock, the size and shape you want your pages to be. this allows you to frame up what your image is going to be before you trim. believe me, this will save you time, headaches, and especially PAPER!!! :)

i'd made the small journals before (and since!) so they were quite straight-forward. i was a little worried about the bigger ones, but really, it's the exact same procedure. make and stack all the pages:

then add the covers and finishing touches et voila!

let's face it, i'm *NEVER* going to complain about being knee-deep in vintage sewing-related illustrations, because they are just tooooooooo much fun. but now, just for a change, i think i might make a few knitting journals! ♥♥♥