Writing by hand

Last year I designed a fabric cover for a composition book, and made several for Christmas gifts. And once I had it figured out, I made extras 'cause choosing fabrics and beads and buttons was just too much fun! One is for my daily journal notebook, and another has a pad of graph paper inside. I keep it in my sewing room, and use it for sketching ideas for quilt blocks.

The colors in these two covers ended up being my favorites... I love the dark rich purples and golds and greens. I gave one to my sister for her birthday, and kept the other for myself.

Each cover has a crazy quilt band, a great way to use up some of my scraps (and practice my paper piecing techniques).

I also loved this winter-themed cover, made from scraps of a border-print fabric I picked up at my first Shop Hop. A buck for as much fabric as you could cram into a small zip-lok bag? Love this kind of challenge... I think I got a couple of yards of remnants into that bag!

When we headed to Colorado this fall, I took one of my notebooks with me for the first time, and I loved using it. I just tucked it inside the leather bag I use for a camera bag, and took it everywhere with me.

The size is perfect for writing on my lap, and I remembered a long-ago shorthand class in college, and the trick for filling a steno book:  you write on only one side of each sheet, all the way to the end of the book.

Then turn the book over and fill up the blank pages. I tried this on my composition book, writing just on the right-hand pages. When I reach the end, I'll take the book out of the cover, turn it around, slip it back into the cover, and fill up the blank side of the pages.

For a right-handed person like me, this works great, especially in the car. The side I'm writing on is always the one that's firmly on my lap, giving me a stable platform to write on. the most stable way to write.