How to Measure & Cut a Homemade Book Cover

Series Summary

Books are part of our lives. Like old friends, we return to our favorites for comfort, for reassurance, for inspiration. In fact, some of us even prefer books to people: if only the humans in our lives were so steadfast and reliable. You can go for months, even years without spending time with them and they remain as eager to please as the day you first drove them home from the bookstore. Even though we may bend their pages and crease their spines, they continue to give us their all. How to reward such love and dedication?

In this series of diy home crafts videos, our gift expert and fellow avid reader Karen Weisman gives us a few ideas for returning the affection of our fine paper friends. Coddle them with presents that show our appreciation! Make a new fabric cover for one of your favorites and thereby enhance the time you spend together. Make a beautiful custom bookmark and you two can take up right where you left off on your last visit, avoiding those awkward moments prefaced by, “I don’t know if I’ve already told you this, but…” Make these projects for yourself, make them for your friends. Because everyone has books that could use some more attention and affecton.

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Karen for Expert Village. Today I'm going to show you how to make this elegant book cover with a matching pen and ribbon bookmark. We'll also be making this pretty photo album cover with a picture pocket. I'll show you how to make these elegant book covers. They’re great if you're giving a gift book, or if you want to make your library look nice. You can get these beautiful ribbons at craft stores or fabric stores. The fabric I like to use should have a good body. This is a trigger poplin. It comes in many colors. It's cotton polyester blend, so it doesn't fade and it's long wearing. We'll start by you put your book on top of the fabric. You want to just rough cut around it. You're going to rough cut about an inch and half on the sides. You're going to cut about 4 inches from the end of the book. Let's do the sides first. I'll measure an inch and a half here and inch and a half over here. I'm just going to rough cut it. It doesn't have to be perfectly straight. You just want it to be a little bit bigger than the book all around. We'll trim that up. Then 4 inches on this side. Then open your book, flatten the spine, and measure the 4 inches over here. You can measure it in a few spots so that you can draw a line. Then cut off any excess that you have."