Completed Project: Embroidered Notebook

When it’s my turn to host book club, I like to include a craft project for my Bookies (my book club members) to do, other than reading the book I choose. My craft project was to decorate a notebook. Christi, my friend and a fellow Bookie, inspired the idea, after seeing all the wonderful notebooks she decorated for our craft show in September. If you click here you’ll see in the pictures some of the notebooks she made on a table. When decorating my notebook, I first wanted to cover it with an old pair of jeans and include pockets to insert pencils. When I started looking at the jeans and thinking of all the work it would entail I changed my mind. Instead, I took out some of my old Urban Outfitters catalogs from years ago. Note: this drives my fireman crazy because I have so many magazines I never use. I keep them because I know one day I will use them. Like this! I love Urban Outfitters’ photographers because they have an artistic yet elegant way of taking pictures of their products, using color filters, over lapping, and other cool techniques photographers use to make photos look different.

Many pages catch my eye, the one I used for this notebook in particular. It literally spoke to me. “Life is a quilt. Each day a unique square but together they fit perfectly,” it said. I’m not sure if the saying makes sense. I don’t consider myself a poet of words; I express myself more through my artwork. Plus, my grammar, sentence structure… my writing skills in general aren’t great. Thank goodness for spell check. I embroidered the saying on the page. I thought to myself, “What would I use this notebook for?” It would be my journal and those words would be what I would want to read before I meet my pencil to those pages inside, to write about my square, my day that day. To remind me no one day in my life is going to be the same as the other. Each day is completely different, unique, even if slightly. Though some days will be good, bad, and the ones in between. We sometimes think, life sucks; life is joyful (I hope to experience more of those days), etc. Life is life. Before I would wish some of the days I’ve lived would have been different. I now think…I wouldn’t change a thing. This is my life. My squares have molded me to the person I’m becoming, the person I am! Yes, “Life is a quilt. Each day a unique square but together they fit perfectly.” Together they make my life; they make me! I want this journal to remind me of that. When my days have me down or when I read this journal as an older me, I want to say, “Life wasn’t that bad.”

If you’re wondering what the confetti like squares (actually tissue paper) mean on the notebook, they’re my future squares waiting to be sewn, I mean lived. I covered the inside of the notebook with pages from Urban Outfitters’ catalog pages too and the back with blue cardstock paper.

I can’t wait to see how The Bookies decorate their notebooks. I will take pictures of their notebooks to share with you.