Its no secret that I LOVE Cloth Book Panels. When I was a child I had a cloth book that my mum must of brought from somewhere, its was rather small but I use to love looking in it, in fact I still have it somewhere around!
12yrs ago when my sister was pregnant with my eldest niece Meggan I remember going to Spotlight and helping to make her items for her nursery, Im not sure how my sister came up with the theme of Noah's Arc but we just went along with it. I discovered Blue Jean Teddy and all these amazing panels of different things.... and there were some Book Panels. So my first taste of them were back then. Likewise in 2005 when my sister had my eldest nephew Michael I remember getting more book panels and making books for him, it was part of his first Christmas Present (he was born on Christmas Night, only just!!).
12yrs ago when my sister was pregnant with my eldest niece Meggan I remember going to Spotlight and helping to make her items for her nursery, Im not sure how my sister came up with the theme of Noah's Arc but we just went along with it. I discovered Blue Jean Teddy and all these amazing panels of different things.... and there were some Book Panels. So my first taste of them were back then. Likewise in 2005 when my sister had my eldest nephew Michael I remember getting more book panels and making books for him, it was part of his first Christmas Present (he was born on Christmas Night, only just!!).
I however didnt make any for my youngest nephew and niece. BUT when it came to my daughter Amelia's first Christmas in 2011, I found some cloth book panels again and made them up for her. I actually had one stashed away for some time it turnt out, Im not sure why; I thought it might of been for my eldest nephew but he already had this book (I do have one of his books which sadly is badly damaged and I have never been able to track down a replacement one of this panel). I am slightly addicted to these panels, BUT as with all my addictions I have such good control over them due to finances. Believe me if money wasnt a factor I would buy them up large!
I use to shove them on my watchlist on Trade Me, but I just couldnt afford to get them - they are sort of hard to find on there now I have noticed. I often see them at Spotlight, and I wait patiently for them to come on clearance or at least on sale (be it a storewide Fabric sale, Nursery Fabric Sale, Quilting Fabric Sale etc or if I have a discount voucher). Today I went into Spotlight to window shop, I actually had plans to find some laminated cotton to make an art smock for Amelia instead I walked out with FOUR panels I found all on clearance, two of which I had never seen before, one of which, the Animals Around The World one I had been eying up since 2011 when I was pregnant this range has a globe planel as well and the Kiwiana for the past couple of years now I think, I have two Kiwiana themed ones already.
I love these cloth books for a few reasons, for starters my beautiful daughter can not rip the pages, she is not able to chew on them or bend the pages back to snap them and break the spine (as per our board books), she can not bite hole in them (as per our plastic bath books) and lastly they can be thrown into the wash if need be!
So I thought I would do a little tutorial on how you make these panels up.
You will need:
- Cloth Book Panel/s
- Wadding (polyester, bamboo what ever tickles your fancy)
OR - Iron on Interfacing
- Cotton Thread
- Sewing Machine
- Iron (if using interfacing)
- Needle and Pins
- Scissors and/or Rotary Cutter
- Cutting Board
Most of these panels always come with directions somewhere on how to make it so do not fret too much. You can make these up in either thick or thin or a mixture. I dont have enough wadding so I am only padding the cover for mine and leaving the pages thin. In my daughter's stash of these books they all vary in thickness.
If this is your first time making these I would recommend you cut each page spread out separately, over time you can match them up and cut them out laid on top of it each (having said that I have had my fabric move and ended up cutting my pages a bit wonky - note the purple dragon one in my daughter's stash..!!!). You will find your panel will have marks on where to cut, but some panels dont always have these marks as you can see. This sometimes makes it a bit tricky as to where to cut and then later sew. I like to try and get my pieces all evenly spaced out where possible in this case.
What I didnt do at the start is iron my panel first to make it all nice and flat, depending how your panel arrived and was packaged you may have some creases. I dont wash mine before cutting, Im not sure how they will turn out if doing so, I have read that sometimes they warp a wee bit, out of pure laziness I dont. For the purpose of this tutorial, my book panel featuring here was off the round cardboard tube type bolt and wasnt folded in anyway in the store racks.
Once you have cut your pieces out, you need to iron some interfacing onto the wrong (dull) sides of the pages, make sure you put the shine dotty looking side down (I couldnt get this captured fully sorry), but this is the "glue" that when heated will melt and stick to the fabric. I didnt put any interfacing on my front cover pages though as I am putting wadding in. Your interfacing will go on every panel piece (except your covers if your doing it how I am).
Cut your wadding to size, likewise if you were making your book thick then you wouldnt need to use the interfacing and just cut wadding to size :) If you are using wadding, you only need to cut one per set of pages to go into the middle of it.
Team up your pages to their correct pair with right (bright) sides facing each other, if your panel came with directions it sometimes says on there what panel goes with what. If using wadding you only need place this onto one of the wrong sides. Pin in place if you feel the need to. Then sew around the edges, I am really sorry but I am no good with measurements in this area but I usually sew with at least 1/4" seam allowance depending how big the page border is. Make sure you leave an opening for turning and reinforce stitch your stop and start point.
Once all sewn up, trim your corners, this gives them a nice clean and less bulky corner once turnt out. Iron your pages again if you wish to, now from here you can either hand stitch the opening closed, machine stitch it a couple of times or do a complete top stitch around the edges of your pages, its really up to you in my honest opinion, I have tried all of these mothods on the books in my daughter's stash.
Next you want to stack all your pages together, making sure they are in the correct order and then sew down the middle of your pages to create the spine, I like to do this two or three times to give it extra strength over a single stitch. Sometimes my machine get a little hormonal and grumpy esp if I am doing these as thick books and have some thicker wadding in them. Alternatively you could hand stitch through all the pages.
Close your book up and it is now completed and ready to be enjoyed and read!
Looking for places to get Book Panels from? Try some of the following places:
- Fabric.com
- Spotlight - Both Australia and New Zealand
- Joannes
- KiwiThreadz
- Ebay - try different countries too! This is to the main US one.
- Etsy
- Trade Me
Lastly GOOGLE either "cloth book panels" or "soft book panels" and you will be linked up to many different places including local fabric, sewing, craft and quilting stores.
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