Storybook banner tutorial

I saw the idea for these storybook banners on Pinterest earlier this week and I knew that it would be a great project for my daughter and I to make for her bedroom. My daughters and I have adore Golden Books and collected quite a few of them over the past few years. We like to make them into dream journals. 

As you can see, to create our book banner we used a children's book with lots of colourful illustrations. If you use a book with just text you could embellish the book pages to match your decor, colours, party theme or whatever.

This simple project can be created in less than an hour and requires very few materials and tools. 

Here's what I used for this project: a Golden children's book, twill tape (I used about 3' for mine), a disappearing ink marker, a piece of paper to create a template, pencil, scissors and sewing machine. 

1. Remove the cover of the book. Cut all pages so they are the same size. You can use a paper cutter for this part if you have one. 

2. Create a template for the shape of the bottom edge of the banner pages from the blank paper. Use the template and a pencil to trace the banner shape onto the bottom of each page and cut out.

3. Arrange the pages the way that you want to see them in the finished banner. There are two sides for each page so if you are using children's books with illustrations you will want to see what they will look like before you start sewing them together. 

4. Next, you will want to create a loop at each end of your twill tape and make sure that each banner page is evenly spaced out along the twill tape. To do that I used a disappearing ink marker to indicate on the twill tape where to make the loops and where to position each banner page. I positioned the pages so that the top edge of the banner page lined up with the top edge of the twill tape. The disappearing ink will "disappear" in a few hours so don't wait too long to do the next step.

5. Now you are ready to start sewing. I did a zigzag stitch at the top of the twill tape and stitched continuously along the twill tape and added the banner pages as indicated along the way. Once all of the banner pages where zigzag stitched to the twill tape, I did another row of straight stitching along the bottom edge of the twill tape so that the twill tape sits flat for hanging. The last bit of stitching that needs to be done is to create and stitch a loop at both ends of the twill tape for hanging.

If you use all 12 pages of a Golden children's storybook you can arrange the pages to tell  a story. If you don't want the banner to be as long as mine, just select the pages that you want and adjust the length of the twill tape.