Cloth Journal Cover

I keep a journal - remnants of a 5th grade writing assignment, if you can believe that.  My journals span two dozen-ish books and there are gaps of several years.  The nuns would be horrified at my penmanship; I can barely read some of my entries.  But how often do you hand-write anything these days?  Still, I love the way that pen-on-paper feels, so I still write in my journal. 

I find it difficult to locate a new book that I will enjoy writing in when I have finished with the old: it needs to be fairly narrow ruled, a binding that opens flat, not too thick, but not so few pages I'll be done with it in a year, it needs to have a cover I like.  And generally, it needs to be inexpensive.  It's not an easy combination to find.

I recently bought a refill journal that matched all of my requirements, except I don't have a cover that requires a refill.  Coolness!  An excuse to sew something.  I had the perfect material on hand, too:  some tea-themed fabric for a table runner that never quite materialized.  I Googled some instructions and cobbled together a pattern.

I am satisfied with the end result.  It overhangs on the ends a little more than I'd like, but when I stitched it a little more snug, it was nearly impossible to get the journal into or out of it.  I guess if I made it a permanent cover, it would be fine.  The trick might be to make it all a little bigger and put cardboard in the sleeves so it would be more like a hard-cover jacket for a soft-covered journal.  We'll see how this one works.  This pattern would be easy enough to modify and make another!