its Andrew over at so spire comm and today I am here to show you how to make this traveler's notebook or traveler's journal you may have seen these in your local craft shop that's such a popular trend right now I personally have been a lifelong journal and and totally obsessed with paper so I love this style because this allows me to collect a lot of little notebooks and use those I basically get a new notebook for every great idea and come up with so this particular design comes together really easily and it's gonna allow you to accommodate several sizes of notebooks so I have here in the slip pocket some little smaller ones and there's a slip pocket on either side and then in keeping with a traditional travel or styling I have this elastic band in the center and there have two of those and that allows you to open up the notebook at the center there and then slip that in to the elastic and then of course your notebook is secured in there and everything just closes up what makes this design unique is we're using a laminated material so it's going to be durable and keep those notebooks which just have simple paper covers secure and nice and tidy without you know sometimes if you just throw the paper notebook in your purse that'll get wrinkled up so shall we get started what you're gonna want to do because I realize you may have a different sized notebook that you prefer or like I said they're always creating new ones and they all seem to be a different size what you're going to want to do major your notebook and I'm gonna give you the measurements that I'm using for this cover and then the formula to figure out your own custom cover so if you'll measure the height of your notebook and you're going to add one inch to the height and then if you open your notebook up and measure that width across you're going to want to add one and a half inches to that width and then that will become your front and rear body panels for the pockets you're going to make the pocket panels eight inches wide by whatever the height of your notebook is okay so this notebook here measures five and a half inches wide by eight and a quarter inches tall so if you want to shop for that exact size notebook then you can work with my pattern measurements which I have two pieces for the pockets that are nine point two five inches tall by eight inches wide and this is a cotton fabric that I laminated myself if you're interested in learning what not to do when you laminate fabric I created a video at the beginning of the year about that then go ahead and read the comments and you'll find out how you actually laminate fabric so I want to thank everybody for their tips because I did follow those and it worked out much better for me the real key is using that pressing cloth and moving very very slowly like sloth slow with the iron okay but an easier thing to do it would be just buy your fabric already laminated okay so we have the pocket panels then the body panels for this notebook are 9.25 inches tall by twelve and a half inches wide I have two of those okay so take one of those body panels and you're going to then fold your pocket panel in half and then just align those raw edges with the outer edge do the same thing with the other pocket fold that in half long ways and line that up with the outer edge then you're going to take two pieces of quarter-inch elastic which mine went ahead and measured 11 inches tall just add a couple inches to that height of your notebook because we want to tuck this elastic under okay so before actually before you use the elastic what you're going to need to do is position this exterior panel with the wrong side up okay so that's there and then carefully transfer the panel that we just created with the right sides up okay because this fabric is laminated the edges should hold up nicely and we can just have those raw edges I am going to trim them up so they're straight at the end so what we have is the exterior layer with the right side facing down and then we have our interior with the right side facing up and the pockets then you're going to position your elastic right just a smidgeon left-of-center for that first piece and you want to tuck that top edge in between those exterior and interior layers go ahead and do that with the second piece - just slightly off to the right so you might have like 3/4 of an inch of that elastic and between those two layers then use binder clips or if you have other clips that you like to use and just clip that down to the elastic secure and then you go ahead at the bottom there and tuck that bottom edges of the elastic in between those two layers as well and clip that with another binder clip and then straighten up your pockets if they shifted and go ahead and put a binder clip at the top and the bottom of each pocket and then when you're working with the laminated fabrics sometimes your traditional metal foot like what I have here on my machine will grab that laminated material and the stitch will not be nice and neat you can buy a little Teflon foot and it has a little roller feature at the bottom and this makes sewing laminate a breeze a walking foot will accomplish the same thing so I have my little roller foot on there and that did come with my Janome so you may want to check the kit that came with your machine I had this but for years and didn't realize it that I even owned it so you may have one already so you're gonna take this whole little bundle like that there's the back side and then the front and you want to stitch all the way around I'm just using a very narrow you know you could use a quarter inch 3/8 of an inch is what I use because that happens to be either prominent mark on my machine and stitch all the way around that edge all the way around now what I want to do is using my rotary cutter and ruler is I just want to trim up those edges so that they are within at least a quarter inch of that stitch line so if you have that clear ruler that makes that a lot easier because you don't want to cut your stitch line no I don't recommend cutting by that elastic so just stop just a little bit short of that elastic so it stays tucked under now I have another super cute cover or traveler's journal flash notebook and I can head to the craft store and take out somewhere no bugs yeh I just show you how that works so just slip that right inside of there and you're no bucks in there nice and secure you have the pockets for additional things that you want to collect you could put your little Clips here like that and fold those under and hold you know stickers or other little notes or things I think you could divide these pockets as well if you wanted to put business cards or credit cards or whatever there's a lot of options that in a lot of different ways that you can personalize this particular style so I hope you enjoyed the project I will be back soon with another sewing tutorial until then as always please know the creative genius in me celebrates the creative genius in you have a beautiful day everyone