Crafting | Making My Own Book Sleeve

Hello and welcome to a DIY testing post! I have always loved using book sleeves for my books since I always am carrying one around with me. Well, I recently picked up a sewing machines and I wanted to finally give making one on my own a try. I came across the following video tutorial on youtube and it seemed very simple. I made a few following the tutorial perfectly and another adapting it for my ereader. This tutorial is called: DIY | Book Sleeve | Tutorial by Craftastic Artist. I highly suggest taking a look at it yourself, it is only about 1 min and 30 sec.

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I will start off by saying the instructions are really straight forward and the video is done in such a wonderful way you can actually see everything and hands don’t get in the way. I was able to follow along wonderfully. My first few attempts I followed the tutorial to a T and here are the results.

I will start off by saying I loved this green colored fabric the the pin up zombies were fun for Halloween. I actually made three of these and gifted them to friends and loved ones. I made the mistake of placinbg the pattern upside down, but other than that I loved pretty much everything. One thing I would have liked would have been the edge that is sewn with a lip, I would have preferred that to be bigger. Also, this side only fits mid sized paperbacks and smaller. So, I would modify the measurements in the future, but the tutorial is good. I just wish the pattern stated book size plus a length to aid in adapting it.

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Adapting

So the second time around I wanted to make a cover for my kobo reader. So, I needed to adapt the pattern a bit. I ended up cutting the fabric 8.5 inches by 16 inches. The one thing I realized about this pattern when adapting it was you use A LOT of fabric with the two different levels of sewing. The first being attaching all of the pieces of fabric together and the second is creating the pouch. Even though I added more than 2 inches of extra fabric this almost ended up being too small. In the future I would add an additional inch height-wise and maybe another inch width. But, I am no professional since sewing is new to me.

In the above picture you can really see the two “levels” of sewing you are doing and you can see how much space is lost in this manner. But, I think I learned a lot from this and it still managed to fit my ereader sideways so it is protected and I am happy.

If you could not tell from my tarot covered fabric I took advance of halloween fabric being on sale, but I really do like the muted colors used. I think it came out better the second time because I learned a lot and was more aware of my placement and pinning of things. I think going forward I am going to get even better at it and make changes as needed.

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Overall, I really liked how straightforward and simple this tutorial is. It was helpful to see them planning it all out and their clear pictures. I might try to find a tutorial for a bigger size to try and compare the two patterns and see if I can find a style that better suits my needs and wants. I hope you liked a little peak at my sewing adventures, if you know any good tutorials for a beginner like me, please send them my way!

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Do you use a book sleeves? Have you ever made one before?

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