Sunday, November 28, 2010

Homemaking Book


In an effort to become a little bit more organized for the upcoming year, I have decided to for go the usual planning calendar that I normally buy (and only use for the first four months of the year) and make myself a homemaking book.

My homemaking book is personalized for the things that I want to keep track of. I took an old binder which I recovered with some leftover fabric and sewed a small pocket in the front to hold my fountain pen.


It was very simple to sew the cover:

1. Open the binder and place face up on the wrong side of the fabric

2. Using a pen trace the outline onto the fabric

3. Using a ruler make the outline bigger by 1 cm

4. Cut out the fabric

5. Place the binder face up on a new section of the fabric and trace out the each section of the cover (without the spine) plus an extra 3 cm to use as a hem (must cut 2 fabric flap sections)

6. Using a ruler make the outline bigger by 1 cm (other than the 3cm hem)

7. Cut out the fabric

8. Get out the sewing machine

10. Zigzag stitch the hem portion of the inside flap and zigzag the middle section of the larger fabric cover at the spine

11. Turn over the 3cm hem with wrong sides together and sew

12. **Pin all pieces wrong sides together and sew with a 1 cm seam allowance

13. Turn inside out and iron

14. Place binder inside the cover

** If you want to add a pocket on the front cover you must do it now before sewing all the pieces together.



Here you can see the inside flap and how the binder cover slips in.





I purchased heavier paper to put in my homemaking book because I write mainly with a fountain pen and I need thicker paper so I doesn't bleed through. I then proceded to section my book with purchased cardboard tabs and made up my own pages with vintage images and fonts.

Though it seems like a lot, some sections only have one or two pages or combine page. Sections in my book include:
Calendar
To Do List (now and someday)
Shopping List
Weekly Menu
Diet and Exercise
Housework schedule (still needs to be worked on)
Correspondence
Future blog posts
Gift giving ideas
Books to read
List of books read
Movies to see
Beauty and Fashion idea
Vegetable garden journal
Flower garden journal
Party planner

Photos of some of my pages:















The great thing about a homemaking book is that everything is one place and easy to find. Plus I can add and reorganize
sections as I see fit and not what a commercial calendar/personal organizer thinks I need to keep track of.

3 comments:

Vegetable Garden Cook said...

Great tutorial! Someday I'll be organized enough to put together a book like this.

barb said...

Thanks for the great idea. Easy to tweek for your personal lists, etc. I had an old leather binder, on the small size,like a daytimer, but have recycled it to use as you have. Helps keep things straight when you have a job, a business and family to juggle :)

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