{book}mark my words

You can only give someone so many zipper pouches. This is the case with a particular friend of mine, so I had to sit down and think a bit to come up with a Christmas present for her. She's quite the bookworm, so I went with a fabric bookmark.
I made this up as I went, and here's how to do it for everyone who may have a bookworm in their lives too.

This particular friend is a feminine, Meg March-ish type, which is why I went with the girly color scheme, but this project could easily be amended to suit your comic-book-loving niece or foodie grandpa.

Here goes....

1. Assemble the following:

+Two 3 1/2" by 8" fabric rectangles (iron stiff interfacing on one of them)

+One 2 1/2" by 7" contrasting fabric rectangle (I penciled diagonal lines 1/2" apart and sewed over them with some fancy machine stitches, but you could do whatever you like: hand-stitchery, applique, horizontal or vertical stripes, etc. Once you're done embellishing it, press the edges under 1/4")

+One 15" long piece of ribbon (loop a shank button through it like I did, or sandwich two buttons over the end and glue in place, or string some beads on it, etc.)

It should all look something like this:

Center the embellished rectangle on the interfaced rectangle and edgestitch in place. Baste the ribbon in the right corner (I sewed it in the left, which I discovered doesn't work if you want the ribbon to hang over the book binding).

Like so (but with the ribbon in the opposite corner):

Pin that piece and your other larger rectangle, wrong sides together, making sure not to catch the ribbon in the edges. Sew around all sides except the bottom, and trim the seam allowances.

Like so:

And so:



Turn right side out and press thoroughly with a steam iron. Turn the bottom edge in 1/4" and press. Edgestitch around the whole thing, and you're done!

Need to wrap the gift you've just created? Check out my posts about Handmade Wrappings here and here.