When you’re on the hunt for a perfect birthday keepsake, our personalized growth charts, 1st birthday shirts and personalized birthday shirts make a super special gift for your little ones.
We also put together this darling tutorial to create a fabric book, filled with pictures of your child — which they’ll LOVE to look at! It’s a perfect handmade birthday keepsake!
YOU WILL NEED:
- Fabric scraps (at least 12.5″ x 6.5″ if you are doing a 6″x6″ book like we did)
- Thin batting
- Printable fabric (we found ours on Amazon) and/or fabrics with images you want in the book. For the cover of our Lily book, we used part of her Playful Owls tee that no longer fits her. You could fill the whole book with old tees, which would be such a great way to recycle tees that no longer fit your child.
- Scissors
HOW WE MADE OUR BOOK:
STEP ONE
First off, we sewed 4 pages total. To get started cut 2 of each fabric to 12.5″ x 6.5″. You should have 8 rectangles 12.5″ x 6.5″. Next cut 4 pieces of thin batting 12.5″ x 6.5″.
STEP TWO
Print and cut out your fabric photos — or whatever you want your pages to be made from for the interior pages.
STEP THREE
Next you need to figure out where you want each image in the book. We found it easier to just make a quick mock-up of the book on scrap paper so we could keep track of what photo goes where — just a little bit easier to “see” it.
STEP FOUR
Pin the photos/images on to each page. Next sew them onto each fabric piece where you have them pinned. We used a zig–zag stitch.
STEP FIVE
Now we are going to sew the pages together. Pin the pages with right sides together and a piece of the thin batting facing the wrong side of the fabric.
Sew around each page (make sure to change your stitch to a straight stitch if you were using zig–zag stitch previously) — and be sure to leave about a 3″ gap so you can turn the page right side out. Next, sew around all 4 pages.
STEP SIX
Turn your pages right side out and stitch up the gap on each page.
STEP SEVEN
Stack the 4 pages on top of each other and sew down the middle to create the binding. We did a double stitch down the middle. If your book is too thick to fit in your sewing machine, you can hand sew for this last step.
STEP EIGHT
Admire how adorable you little book is and think about how much fun it’s going to be for your little one to use.
Look at how much this little lady LOVES her Look at Me Book!! It’s a perfect birthday gift, along with one of our personalized growth charts, personalized shirts for kids or personalized birthday shirts.
