How We Make a Book Sleeve

Book Sleeves are a must, as we’ve already concluded here.

Today, the Gribook Accessories bunch will share with you all the ins and outs of making a fabric Book Sleeve and we’ll have a GIVEAWAY at the end. Oh, the excitement!

To begin with, we choose an outside fabric. We go for pretty, thick cotton that is nice to the touch. We keep in mind that you’ll be touching and seeing this sleeve quite a bit as you read.

We have a pattern we use for our Book Sleeves. We make them to fit medium-sized books, meaning 24 x 17. If you need to make a Sleeve for a particular book, you can take the book’s measurement and add 1-2 cm seam allowance when you cut the fabric.

We cut two pieces of fabric, according to book sleeve measurement + seam allowance:

1. width: 26 cm, length: 42 cm

2. width:26 cm, length: 12 cm

We cut a piece of interfacing (that’s the special sticky padding) for the smaller piece of fabric ( 24 x10) and fix it to the fabric with an iron.

We fix the elastic to the smaller piece of fabric (24×10), then sew the two pieces to each other, to get the result in picture #4.

We cut the inside fabric – following the same pattern, and the interfacing for it. For this sleeve, that is 24 x 50 cm of neon pink fabric and black interfacing. Again, we glue them together with the iron.

What we do next is mark a cm of seam allowance, and sew the outside and inside fabric together. We also cut the loose threads, because details like this matter.

The next steps are: to turn the sleeve inside out, so we have a sock-like sleeve, and fix it together by hand, then the sewing machine. We fold the flaps to the side symetrically and fix with safety pins.

We usually fix the flaps to the side by hand, because there are 6 layers of fabric/padding, and this is too much for our sewing machine. If you don’t have that problem, all the better (and easier)! Last thing we did was to fix a matching button. This is where my skills come in handy – I’m always keen to rummage through buttons and pick the perfect one.

What we get is a Book Sleeve that is not just adorable, but very useful, too. You can see it in the featured picture at the top of this post. Pretty, huh?

Unfortunately, the Book Sleeve we made for this tutorial got sold right away – we hope it serves its owner well – but we have another Book Sleeve to give to one of you.

Made from bold blue and raspberry pink fabrics, this is a trendy meets classy Book Sleeve. But let me show you a picture:

To WIN, you need to:

1. LIKE this post

2. LIKE our Gribook Accessories FB Page 

3. Leave a comment answering this question: What is the last book you enjoyed reading and why?

We’ll choose a winner by the end of the week, so keep those likes and comments coming!