See the Creator's Compendium as a craft project folder in AGF Listen To Your Heart Fabric
If you’ve ever tried designing a pattern, than you’ll understand the amount of tedious work involved in getting something just right.
There really isn’t a lot of ‘fun’ in tedious. But there certainly is reward in getting through the tedium – because glorious adventures await on the other side.
Once you've got everything fitting and working together, you get the fun of making one of your own patterns in brand new fabric.
Art Gallery Fabrics - Listen to Your Heart Fabric
This time, I’ve made the Creator’s Compendium in the Art Gallery Fabrics range ‘Listen to Your Heart’ by Sharon Holland. This range has combined soft peaches with warmer oranges and cool teal tones in such a pretty way.
As time goes on I’m finding myself liking orange – and that’s a bit of a shock!
This collection has a big ‘hero’ print – a, bold floral, and I knew straight away I wanted this print for my cover. It really grabs your attention and makes you want to see inside right away!
If you’ve followed the development of the Creator’s Compendium, you’ll know that I designed this to fit a book – specifically a daily planner. This made it quite a niche product, because if you don’t use a physical planner you just won't have a use for this, and if you use a different sized planner than this won’t pattern won’t work for you either.
And all this time, I was itching to try styling this as a craft project folder.
This was the perfect time to give this a go – and it worked even better than I’d hoped.
The internal structure is still basically the same because it worked really well for this already. But what sets this design apart from other folders is that the zipper gusset is already really wide to accommodate a thick book inside. This means you can stuff this really full of gear, unlike something with a narrow zipper.
So let’s take a peek inside shall we??
The inner cover flaps convert perfectly from being a flap that just holds a book cover, to being an extra pocket to hold a project – in this case an embroidery hoop. It tucks right in there perfectly and can even cope with a larger size hoop than this.
And look how pretty?!
The soft peaches combined with the warmer floral is just so lovely!
The pocket on the exterior here is great for holding trim like lace and ribbon.
I found this extra special handmade lace in my stash - complete with gorgeous writing to the original recipient. I've collected precious notions from everyone and everywhere, and this was the perfect time to use it.
Perfect for Bulky Projects
I was so excited when I managed to fit some more bulky items like perle 08 thread and that big roll of crochet lace into that side zipper pocket.
Because the gusset of the folder is really wide, this can cope with quite a bit of thick stuff, and you can see that when zipped up it's lumpy but not misshapen.
Moving over to the other side, you can’t quite see it, but I’ve tucked an A5 pattern inside the other inner cover flap, and you can easily slide another notebook in here if you wish.
I know I love to keep a notebook on hand for my projects so that I don't forget where I'm up to or forget the changes I've made.
I’ve incorporated rivets into the pocket corners this time –another mod that I’d been itching to try. This was so easy to do, and to fully show them off, I left off the flaps altogether.
Incorporating the sweet animals as fussy cuts on these pockets makes your project super cute! Who says grownups can't enjoy these things?!
You can use these little pockets for button cards, more trim, thread bobbins…
Rivets, Piping and a Pencil Case Mod
The biggest change this time was I modded the pencil case to be sewn into the lining. This was another idea I’d had much earlier, and was super easy to do. I just cut the lining in half and left part of the base of the pencil case partially un-sewn, so it could be sewn into the lining seam.
The pencil case is great for your scissors, a little ruler, pens (of course!), a needle book, and I have spare embroidery floss that I haven’t started using yet.
Back to the outside, I used the striking burnt orange fabric in this range for piping to make the cover really pop.
Piping just has that magical ability don’t you think?
It takes a project from just plain ol' smart, to ‘super tailored’ all by a little peek of colour in a seam.
I hope this has given you some ideas for how to use your own Creator’s Compendium as a project folder.
The sky’s the limit here, and I’m so excited about – there’s many different crafts and different sized projects that this would work for.
So please drop me a line, or share your Compendium to socials using #CreatorsCompendium and tag me!
I'd love to see how you're using yours!
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