DIY self-adjusting fabric bookmarks

When you love books and you love sewing, you can combine both and make these self-adjusting bookmarks. They are a great stash buster and because they are equipped with an elastic, they will easily fit books or notebooks of different sizes.

Find out how I make them below: 

What you need for each bookmark: 

• a piece of fabric with about 38 x 10 centimeters. This was my starting point though, as I was using fabric scraps, some of the bookmarks I made ended up slightly shorter or thinner. Since the elastic will allow the bookmarks to stretch, you have some flexibility in what concerns the size of the fabric.

• a piece of thin, round elastic (10 to 12 centimeters is usually sufficient) - you can use other types of elastic too, just make sure it's not too bulky. 

• one or two buttons (only one is really needed, though you may want to add a second one as embellishment).

How to make it: 

Fold the fabric in half lengthwise, right sides together, and sew close to the edge.

Turn inside out, fold it back to make sure the seam is in the center and iron the fabric. Fold both edges inward and insert the folded piece of elastic in one of them. Top stitch. Make sure the ends of the elastic are well secured when you stitch over it. To make sure the edges of the elastic don't escape through the middle of the stitches you may want to tie them in a know prior to sewing (this is especially useful if your elastic in on the thinner side).

 

Sew a button on the elastic free edge of the fabric:

And you're done. In the end, it should look like this:

Now make lots and lots of them!

Here are the three that I managed to sew on this batch:

As you can see, for the top one I used two buttons instead of one, even though the second button doesn't really serve a purpose other than making the bookmark look prettier. My daughter immediately snatched that one for her books:

As to the others, I'm using them now in my books and notebooks, and I'll be making more in the future for sure!

Happy Monday!