Triple Birthday Gift

My little first grade son was recently invited to a triple birthday party for three of his classmates, two boys and a girl. He loves these story cubes so we built our gifts around them. We decided to pair them with a package of colored pencils and one of these awesome primary journals (like a composition book only set up for younger kids to write and illustrate their stories). To personalize the gifts, I made three different fabric covers for the books with an appliqued initial on each. I used this tutorial by Maggie at Smashed Peas and Carrots to take the guesswork out of the measurements because my journals were the same size as her composition books - hooray! I didn't embellish with a ruffle, but other than that I followed her easy instructions.

Now for the lesson learned. Next time, I would cut the two large rectangles the same size instead of piecing together the inside flap pieces. I know that makes absolutely no sense unless you have read the tutorial but (if you have) I think it would work the same if you wanted to skip that step. Piecing together the large rectangle would be a cute way to showcase a coordinating fabric though or to use up slightly smaller fabric remnants. I didn't have quite enough striped material for the large rectangle so piecing them together saved the day on that one.