Page 1 - Lock and Key Heart

For my first page, I decided to do a lock and key. I got this originally from Little Hands, Big Work I added my own touch to it by making it the lock and key to my heart.

Since this was my first page, I had to decide what size pages I wanted and how to go about making them. I liked the idea of cloth pages stuffed with batting. I found out that batting could eventually fall apart and sink to the bottom of the project if not tacked correctly. This is why I decided to use felt to fill the pages. I decided a standard page size would be big enough without being too big. However, the felt is 9x12, so this is the size I decided to go with. I made the binding side 2 inches longer. This will give me 9x12 to work with for the designs and 2 inches to bind the pages together.

The cloth needed 1 inch on each side to sew the two sides together to make a page. This makes my cloth 13x14, the felt 11X12 (which means I need more than one piece of felt.) If I make another book, I will make it with the felt size only. This will make it a little smaller, but this will keep me from having to use two pieces of felt for filler. I took my Word outline, and printed out the heart to use as a template.

I used sewing glue to glue the felt to the cloth, then sewed the heart onto the cloth and felt. Sewing all of the felt to the cloth and felt filler should keep the felt in place. I used a piece of small rope to secure the lock and key. When I sewed the heart, I sewed the rope down under the heart as well. Then I used hot glue to keep the rope knot from coming undone. Hopefully, this will keep anything from coming apart.

Under the heart, I sewed a different piece of cloth to give it some contrast when the heart opens. I used large eyelets or grommets (My first time for these too. Turns out this is very easy.) on the heart to attach the rings to close the heart. Finally, I laminated a picture to put in the heart for a nice surprise.

This is Ayven playing with the lock and key before I even sewed the first two pages together. I am thinking this is a very good sign for the rest of the book.