My mom was looking for a notebook for her wedding speeches (she’s a ceremonialist on the side). She always writes a personalized text to read during the ceremonies, and it needs to be presented in a beautiful, fitting folder or notebook.

With that in mind, I thought this style of bookbinding would be the perfect solution — handmade, detailed, and much more personal than a store-bought version. So, I decided to embark on this project with not much prior experience. I’d just recently gotten into embroidery, and out of the dozen notebooks I’ve bound, I had never tried this particular technique.

Materials

• Fabric – large enough to cover the notebook + embroidery base
• Embroidery floss and needles of your choice, as well as any accessories like the hoop/frame I used
• Sturdy cardboard for the cover
• Heavyweight paper for the lining, the binding “accordion” pieces and the strips
• White glue and a wide brush to apply it
• Other tools and materials I used: rulers, pencil and pen, eraser, masking tape, rotary cutter, X-Acto knife, scissors, cutting mat, mini iron, corner rounder, and a bone folder.

I worked mostly with what I had on hand, so consider this an approximate materials list. The essentials are a sturdy piece of cardboard (I used the back of a paper pad) for the cover, and a heavyweight paper for the lining and binding. Everything else can be improvised!

Step 1: Embroidery

I gathered a few inspiration pictures of floral and bouquet embroidery designs, picked my favorite flower stitches, and collaged them digitally into one composition. Then, I traced and transferred the final design onto my fabric.

I didn’t practice any of these flower stitches beforehand — I just went straight for it and copied them from my reference images, which was risky but worked out surprisingly well. Seems like all the embroidery exercises I’ve done lately paid off!
(Here’s a bit more about my embroidery journey.)

Step 2: Prepping the Materials

The notebook structure is made of three main parts: the cover, the inner lining, and the binding mechanism. I also needed to create paper strips that slide between the pages and into the cover to hold everything together.

I started by cutting the cover pieces out of heavy cardboard — about one inch larger than an A4 sheet. The spine is quite thin since this notebook will only hold a few pages. I also cut out a circular window on the front cover (using my embroidery hoop as a template).

Next, I measured and cut the fabric to wrap around the front, spine, and back covers, leaving a couple of inches to fold over the edges. The fabric was a bit wrinkled from storage, so I ironed it as best I could.

I prepped the lining paper but left it slightly oversized to trim later. Then, I cut out the paper strips that would slide into the spine “accordion” (the little folded pockets that hold the pages in place). I rounded their corners for a neater look and made a few extras, just in case some wore out over time.

Step 3: Creating the Cover

Once everything was prepped, I assembled the cover! I taped the cover pieces together, flipped them over, and brushed on an even coat of glue. Then, I carefully laid the fabric on top and smoothed it out with a flat tool — a tricky step since I needed to keep the fabric taut while still allowing the cover to open and close easily.

I flipped the piece over to glue down the fabric edges, taking extra care at the corners to avoid thick folds. For the circular window, I cut small slits, folded each one inward, and glued them down one by one — alternating sides to keep the tension balanced and the circle neat.

Step 4: Adding the Embroidery

By the time I was ready to attach the embroidered fabric, it had gotten a bit wrinkly from stitching and handling. I used my mini-iron to smooth it out gently, especially around the tight corners.

I aligned the embroidery by eye on the front cover, flipped it carefully, and glued one side at a time — pulling just enough to keep it smooth without warping the fabric.

Step 5: Prepping the Inside & Australian Bind

The inner lining was a bit tricky to glue down since the paper was thick and slightly curled. I tried not to overthink the minor imperfections in the cover’s shape (perfection is overrated anyway).

After roughly cutting the paper to size, I folded a center crease and glued it down. Then, I trimmed the edges with an X-Acto knife and ruler, cleaning it up by eye. I used a couple of paper clips to hold things in place while drying.

It’s not a perfect job, but honestly — it looks pretty close to it! I’m proud of how it turned out, and I’d love to make more of these in the future.

Final Touches

The last step was adding the pages! My mom prints her speeches on standard A4 paper, so I just needed to connect every two sheets to fit the binding system. I debated between using washi tape or making my own connector strips out of plain paper to match the paper’s color.

I ended up gifting her the notebook already because I was too excited to keep the surprise to myself. I explained the two options for making her printed pages compatible with the binding (washi tape vs. glued paper “hinges”). Once she starts using it, I’ll update you all on how the notebook looks in its full potential.

I’m really happy with how it turned out — it exceeded my expectations, especially considering the total lack of planning for this project! I’m even happier that my mom loved it too — maybe a little too much, since she says it’s too pretty to use and has kept it on display at her house ever since. 🩷

From all the textile arts, the world of embroidery has been out of my radar for the most part. Perhaps because I’ve been notoriously bad at hand-sewing, I always make way crooked lines and uneven stitches; it requires precise, mindful repetition, which is not my strong suit – I’m more of a “good enough” and “do it for fun” kinda gal.

However, I’m happy to say that recently something changed in me and I’ve grown more and more curious and interested in learning embroidery!

The first seed

My mom and I have been designing an upcycling and textile arts workshop to provide mothers (and other relevant groups) with tools for personal expression, community building, and creative entrepreneurship. During our numerous conversations about the project, she introduced me to the traditional Japanese embroidery practice known as Sashiko. It’s known for featuring geometrical grid-based patterns. They are beautifully mesmerizing and functional. The technique is often used as an up-cycling tool to mend and connect fabrics; it also adds durability and structure to them. In Japan, it’s commonly used to create home-made cleaning rags, for example. I loved the patterns, history, and the useful nature of this technique.

During other conversations with professionals in the field, who are part of this upcoming project, I was also introduced to the idea of creating a stitch book or flag, where you swatch different embroidery stitches for personal reference. After learning about it, I kept seeing this idea online, and I ended up learning there are a lot more stitches than I knew about, with lots of variations.

The reconnection

On my recent hand-made Fanny pack project, I had to do a lot of delicate, beautiful, and secure hand-sewing as well as some tricky cross-stitching embroidery on top of crochet. It was a big personal challenge, but I did do a better job than I expected. This also helped me feel inspired to continue exploring the world of embroidery. I was surprised by how relaxing and fun the hand-sewing portions of the project were!

After this new perspective with the craft, during a talk with my mom, I learned about my late grandma studies of embroidery; I knew she was a crafter seamstress for the family (and my grandfather was a leather shoemaker too) but I wasn’t aware that she also enjoyed embroidery (specifically satin/paint style) and tatting, a lacing technique – which I’ve just recently learned about.

After this talk, I found myself inspired by the possibilities. I’ve unfortunately never met my mom’s mom, but I still feel a strong connection to her. My mom says we have a lot in common, in our ways and looks, and our interests too! I feel a connection to her and other elders when I practice these techniques that are being passed down through generations of women. I feel fortunate to have access to learning techniques from a variety of experienced teachers online and in life, and to have access to the materials to experiment with them.

The beginning

I had some scrap fabric, and in a jolt of inspiration, I started cutting it and crudely sewing my book together. It’s pretty small, and since I used cotton fabric without much planning, I realized that the edges were coming apart quickly. I could’ve hemmed the edges before binding it, but without much planning, I had to come up with an alternative. The best idea I had was to stitch the sheet’s edges with a border stitch to stop it from fraying further. all around q loop. This would also be my first embroidery exercise in a sense. I started trying to do a fake overlock stitch but ended up giving up on that and doing a simple buttonhole stitch that was yielding about the same results, but it was a lot faster. I ended up finishing it up in one (long) day, a lot faster than I expected, to be honest.

Now for the fun part: learning embroidery. I started out by planning the stitches I wanted to learn. I sketched them out in my notebook in categories I improvised along the way. I drew a few parallel lines on the first page and followed with a simple straight stitch.

I experimented with sewing thread and embroidery thread, as well as playing with variations in stitch length, gap length, color changes, and multi-line designs. At this point, I was not sure what about my plans or if I was going to follow any kind of structure for the book, but I kept going with my explorations and learning a lot from Pinterest and TikTok. I would search up the stitch name, learn the basics, and then try to copy all the variations.

After a while, I was really learning a lot about the different techniques, and I was having fun with the contrasting colors and playing with the different variations of the same stitch. It has been a great experiment so far, and I’m starting to apply my newfound skills to more complex techniques and personal projects. I’ll post again when I make more progress on my studies with more notes about my learning and findings. Until then, happy crafting!