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This reading journal is the first of a line I’ll be making. This in particular has enough pages for that intense reader – a full twelve-month calendar to record your thoughts and feelings on over a hundred different books! (In the future, I’ll be making reading journals with for people who read five to ten books per month.)

I wanted to make this one a buttonhole stitch, but I also wanted more than the plain cream of the signatures showing through. Therefore, I used several different decorative papers as dividers. To match the cover fabric, I used black and a few different patterns of green for my selection.

Since the cover fabric is dark, I wanted to use a thread with a good contrast without clashing. Therefore, I used white. White goes with everything. The most challenging part of this stitch is always keeping the pages in line so it’s not loose (since you first stitch the top, then the bottom) while also making sure it’s not too tight. I’m glad to have managed a good tension.

This book is not for the faint of heart. It has 480 pages. This will last you all year. Each of the twelve signatures starts with a month-introduction page, then a calendar to record when you’re reading certain books, then thirty-eight pages to write your memos.