Now, place the fabric on your ironing board with the glue side facing up. If you end up with bare spots, try placing the backing over the fabric again in the same position, and iron over the bare spots again to transfer the glue from the paper to the fabric. You should end up with a nice, even coat of glue fused to the back of your fabric. See the shiny glue fused to the back of the fabric? When you're done ironing, let the fabric and paper cool for a moment. Keep the iron moving, and make sure you iron over all of the paper - especially out to the edges. Your iron should be on high heat with no steam (No steam is really important here.) Pass the hot iron over the paper backing of the fusible web. Place the fusible web over the fabric, with the web side facing down. Place the fabric on an ironing board wrong side up. There's no need to get too exacting about anything on a Sunday morning. This tutorial was shot on a Sunday morning. You'll notice that I haven't gone to too much trouble to cut anything perfectly straight. Next, get a sheet of fusible web that's slightly smaller on all sides than the fabric. Do take a moment and see whether the black-and-white composition book cover will show through the fabric - this can happen with light colors especially. This project works best with a woven cotton that's a little on the thicker side and tightly woven. So first, you'll need a piece of fabric that's roughly 1' larger on all sides than your opened-flat composition book. I don't know why it took me so long to arrive at this dead-simple idea, but here you go. But I wanted something a little more simple and durable - after all, my notebooks take abuse. There are tons of tutorials on the web for mixed-media treatments, or removable patchwork covers. I've been noodling with ways to make them look prettier. Last August, our local Fred Meyer had them on sale for 25 cents apiece for back-to-school, and K and I laid in a stock to get us well into our old age. I loves me some of those old-school composition books.

Composition notebook cover