Soft Pocket Picture Book - Sewing Tutorial Part II

So I spent the rest of the afternoon yesterday finishing up the soft pocket book only to discover I'd do several things differently. You get to witness my beta version. ;)

On to the tute and then I'll discuss what I'll do differently in the next version.

At the end of Part I you were left having finished one sheet. That's a grand total of four pages because each sheet is double sided and each side is two pages.

I continued on sewing up sheets until I had four finished. That's when I realized my original idea of six pages would create a book that was too thick.

I stacked those four sheets on top of each other and pinned them together down the center.



I sewed a relatively straight line through the sheets and created the binding.


Here you see the front page of the completed book. (please forgive the glare from the vinyl)



Here is a shot showing some of the inner pages.



What I want to do differently in future books:

1. Change the dimensions. 20" x 11" is too wide. I'll cut the next sheets down to 18" x 11".

2. Add in a handle by the binding. The baby girl LOVES to carry her soft books and they should definitely have handles.

3. Reduce the number of pages. I already did that on this version, but it needs to be in the plans from the get-go on future books.

4. Use a turn and topstitch technique instead of serging the edges. I don't like the look of the serged edges and I'm too impatient to make sure I get the corners uniform in size.

5. I might consider adding in a flap that can velcro over the back page to make a closure for the book. This is a maybe, but again the baby girl LOVES her books that have a closure.

If you were patient enough to wait for part II of the tute, you get to make these changes right away!