This is a great project idea from Kelly Casanova for using up small amounts of leftover yarn in various weights and fibres. The stripes of your weft will go vertically on the notebook, so you don’t need a very wide warp, just the height of your notebook. They suggest weaving something that will end up 16x8 inches off the loom, to fit a hardback notebook 5x7 inches including seam allowance.
Use a warp yarn that matches with the heddle you have, for example a DK with a 7.5 or 8 heddle. A wool warp is more forgiving of you stuffing your hands through than a cotton warp, which will stretch and mess with your tension. You might want to do a warp long enough for 2 covers, cutting off the first one when it is done. This would be around 60 inches when including wastage at the ends.
You can use a project like this to play with Clasped Weft Weaving, or some tapestry-like techniques, although don’t beat as hard as you would for tapestry. Leave all your tails out near the edges on the back of your work, and once you’ve done your wet finishing just trim them off, reducing as much bulk as possible.
Remember to measure before you advance your warp, write down your length and mark where you measured to with a pin.
Press the piece, then line it with some plain fabric. You will probably want to add a lot of pins, and not just around the edges as the woven fabric can move around a lot. Leave a decent sized gap so you can turn out easily.
The tutorial suggests sewing fixed size pockets on both sides of the notebook cover, so it fits one notebook precisely. However, I think an adjustable design like some sewn book jackets might also work - see for example this book jacket tutorial which also adds a bookmark - super neat! This would allow the cover to fit notebooks (or normal books!) of different thicknesses, as long as the height is the same.
A youtube commenter suggested adding some floats to the woven fabric, which could be used as an integrated pen loop on the finished cover, which I think is really cool.
Sources
- Videos part 1 - starting off, part 2 - nice weaving techniques and part 3 - finishing and the accompanying blog post