Everyone has ties lying around. And everyone has ugly ties that no one will ever use for neck wear to boot. It’s sad that so much quality silk is hanging in closets, taking up space and not being touched and enjoyed.

That’s where this tutorial comes in. I found some old school composition notebooks for less than a dollar and made some loud silk covers for them from old ties, and it only takes about 30 minutes. The end result is a unique journal that helps declutter your closet!

Start by cutting a piece of muslin 11″ by 17″ in order to cover a standard composition notebook. If you are covering a different type of notebook, measure the cover of the book with the book laying open and add one inch to the height and width of the measurement.

Use a rotary cutter and ruler to get a straight edge.

Then use a seam ripper to open up the tie. There is a cotton or polyester stability form inside the tie that can be discarded. Or you can save it like I did. It had a very open weave and I thought it would be good for doing embroidery.

After you have the muslin and the opened up tie prepared. Lay the muslin on scrap pages and spray evenly with a spray adhesive. I used Elmer’s Multi-Purpose adhesive. It is sticky enough to hold, but if you need to adjust you can peal the tie up and move it around without having to respray the muslin.

When the tie is open you can lay the point on the tie in one of the corners and adhere it to the muslin on the diagonal. There should be a quarter inch hem pressed on one side of the tie. Leave that hem. As you cut and place the tie over the whole piece of muslin, stick the raw edges under the hem in order to have finished edges on top. This will keep the silk from fraying as you use the journal cover.

Notice how the tie’s repeating pattern makes an almost uniform print? I love it. Much more attractive this way than hanging uncomfortably from some poor guy’s neck.

Top stitch all the overlaps to secure all the raw edges and attach the silk to the muslin.

When the muslin and silk are attached, securely trim the silk that hangs over the edge so it is even.

Cut two 11″ by 7″ pieces of muslin to be the inside flaps of the cover. Sew a half inch seam on one 11″ side of each.

Lay the front of the cover and the inside flaps together, right sides facing as shown above.

Stitch all pieces together with a straight stitch a half inch in, all the way around. Zig zag stitch the edge all the way around to prevent the layers from fraying.

Turn the whole things right sides out and make crisp corners. Edge stitch all the way around and slide the composition notebook into the sleeves.

Look at that! Take your awesome new book and write a best selling novel in it.