Finished vegetable-tanned leather journal cover open on a workbench with a notebook in its sleeves and stitching tools beside it.
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A Leather Journal Cover

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

A soft wrap that has to close around a book, every day, without a fight.

A leather journal cover is a single piece of leather that wraps a bound book, with two sleeves on the inside to catch the book’s own covers, and it’s one of the best first projects in vegetable-tanned leather because it forgives almost everything except bad measuring. There’s no frame and no hardware you can’t skip. What it asks for is a straight cut, a book in your hand while you size it, and stitches that will hold a cardboard cover in place for years of being opened and shut. What follows is the materials list, then the work in order.

Video: Gift Idea: Trifold Journal Cover with The Old Pink House, from Tandy Leather on YouTube.

Tandy Leather’s video walks through a trifold version with eyelets and elastic. I make briefcases, not journals, so most of the method here comes from the toolmakers and makers who publish theirs, and they’re named where their step comes up. Where I have a view, I’ll say it’s mine.

Picking the leather

Thin enough to fold. Firm enough to stand up on a desk.

Hands wrapping vegetable-tanned leather around a notebook to size a leather journal cover before cutting.

Start lighter than you think. Tandy’s trifold journal cover project calls for a 4/5 oz dyed veg-tan side, or any 4/5 oz leather, for the cover. For the inside, its zipper pocket insert drops all the way to a 1-2 oz veg-tan sheepskin. A BushcraftUK journal cover tutorial uses dyed vegetable-tanned leather for the outside and natural veg-tan kip of about 1mm for the inner panels.

The leather I build cases from is the wrong choice here. My Leather Choices page calls English bridle “traditionally very waxy, thick, heavy, and stiff that takes awhile to soften.” That’s what you want on a briefcase panel that has to carry a laptop. My opinion: on a journal it fights the book. The cover won’t lie flat, the spine folds into a hump, and the whole thing springs open on the desk like it’s trying to get away from you.

Veg-tan also takes a tool. The Montana Leather Company’s post on making leather journals with Robert Little shows him turning the company’s Vaqueta veg tan into tooled journal covers. Chrome-tanned leather won’t hold a stamp the same way. If you want initials or a border, buy veg-tan.

Materials and tools

Short list. Most of it is already on a leatherworker’s bench.

This list pulls from Tandy’s trifold project, the Lee Valley make-it-yourself journal cover kit and the BushcraftUK build. Take the core and choose one closure.

  • Cover leather: vegetable-tanned, around 4/5 oz, big enough for the open book plus margins.
  • Sleeve leather: thinner veg-tan or kip, around 1mm, or offcuts of the cover leather skived down.
  • The book: the actual notebook, in your hand, not its listed size.
  • Thread and needles: waxed thread (Tandy lists 0.8 mm; Lee Valley’s kit uses waxed polyester) and two harness needles for a saddle stitch.
  • Hole tools: a four-prong diamond stitching chisel and a mallet or maul, or a stitching awl.
  • Cutting and marking: a steel rule, a sharp knife or rotary cutter, a scratch awl, a cutting board, and a groover or wing divider for the stitch line.
  • Edges: a beveler, a burnishing agent such as gum tragacanth, a wooden slicker and a scrap of canvas.
  • Closure, pick one: a leather tie (Lee Valley), eyelets with elastic cord and a setter (Tandy), or press studs on a flap (BushcraftUK).
  • Finish: a light conditioner or oil.

Pick the book before the leather. Tandy builds its trifold around a large journal refill, and Lee Valley cut its kit to fit the company’s own Logbook. Both are telling you the same thing from opposite ends: a cover is made for one book, and a different book means a different cover. If you like a brand of notebook and plan to keep buying it, make the cover for that one.

Lee Valley puts its kit at about 6 to 8 hours. Plan on that for a first one, and don’t be insulted if it takes longer.

Sizing it to the book

Measure the book open. Then close the leather around it before you cut twice.

Macro view of hand saddle stitching on the inside sleeve of a leather journal cover.

Everything that goes wrong on a journal cover goes wrong here. The BushcraftUK maker uses an A6 notebook that stands 148mm high and spreads 225mm open flat, and cuts the cover 165mm by 250mm. Any smaller, that maker writes, and the book’s own cover had to be trimmed to fit. Any bigger looks odd. That’s a margin of a little over a centimeter top and bottom, and a little more than that across the width to give the spine room.

Cami Graham’s DIY leather journal cover does it with the book in her hand instead of a ruler. She lines the book up with a straight edge of the leather, leaves a quarter inch above and below, then folds and wraps the leather around the book and marks where to cut, keeping plenty of overlap. Two ways to the same place.

I work with rulers and by eye, not templates, and a journal cover is the kind of piece where that pays. The book is the template. Wrap the leather around it, close it, open it, close it again.

My opinion: test-close the cover around the book before a single hole gets punched. The spine eats more leather than anybody believes. A book that’s an inch thick needs an inch of spine plus whatever the leather loses folding around it, and two layers of sleeve stacked on the inside take some of that away too. A cover cut tight across the width looks fine on the bench and won’t shut on a full journal.

Sleeves and stitching

The sleeves hold the book. The stitches hold the sleeves.

Two narrow pockets, one at each end of the inside, take the book’s front and back covers. Lee Valley positions a card pocket on the left side under its sleeve. Tandy glues its pocket edges and saddle stitches the three marked sides, and invites you to add pockets or change their sizes. The BushcraftUK maker stitches in two kip inner panels to hold the book and adds a goatskin pen holder.

Glue first, lightly, along the edges only, so the sleeve can’t creep while you punch. Then mark your stitch line with a groover or a wing divider, and punch through both layers at once.

Graham’s cover was sewn on a machine, with a walking foot, and she gives one warning every leatherworker should tape over the bench: “Needles will leave holes in leather that will not recover.” That goes double for the punch. A wrong row of holes is there for good.

I hand saddle stitch everything. I gave up sewing machines a long time ago. Lee Valley’s kit teaches the same stitch, two needles leapfrogging through each hole. The BushcraftUK maker saddle stitches too, piercing the holes with a sewing awl into a cork sanding block behind the leather.

The reason I stitch by hand is on my page about the art of hand stitching: the work is stitched “in the air,” not pushed against a metal plate, and a saddle stitch “is a stronger bond than a small sewing machine stitch.” On a journal cover the sleeve seam gets pulled every time the book is forced in or out. And look at the inside, because “An Important Aspect Of Hand Stitching Is how clean the stitch is on BOTH sides.” On a journal, the inside is the side you look at every day. The ends are in the post on backstitching and burning the thread ends.

Edges, closure and finish

Burnish what shows, close it with something simple, and leave it alone.

Closed leather journal cover with a warm patina, tied shut with a leather lace on a desk.

Tandy calls edge burnishing on its cover optional. Its project page says “It is not required for this project,” but it gives the edge a cleaner look. The BushcraftUK maker bevels the top edges, rubs gum tragacanth in with canvas, then works carnauba cream into the leather inside and out and buffs it with a shoe brush. Lee Valley includes a slicker in its kit for the same job.

Decoration goes on before assembly or not at all. Tandy suggests stamping, patches, charms, paint, extra pockets or a pen loop. My opinion: do any stamping while the cover is still one flat piece on a hard surface, because once the sleeves are stitched on it never lies that flat again.

For the closure, Tandy measures the thickness of the filled notebook first and only then cuts the outer elastic to length, knotting it and threading it out through a back eyelet. Lee Valley’s tie just wraps the finished cover. BushcraftUK marks its press-stud positions with the book inside the cover and a pen in its holder, which is the right instinct: set the closure on the full book, not the empty one.

The writing pad portfolio post covers the stiffer cousin of this project, built around a pad in bridle. If you’re still deciding which of the two you’d actually carry into a meeting, Padfolio or Notebook argues it by the kind of meeting.

Now the part that cuts against me. I’ve spent this whole post telling you to stitch the sleeves by hand, clean on both sides. Roseann Hanson wrote up a simple leather journal 15 years on for Exploring Overland. Hers is a one-piece, unstructured cover of plain vegetable-tanned cowhide, finished with olive oil, soaked and shaped around a book wrapped in plastic, and tied up with cheap leather bootlaces. Her write-up mentions no stitching and no glue. She says after 15 years it has a nice patina “but holds up well,” and it went across five continents to get there.

No sleeves. No seam to fail. Nothing for a needle to get wrong. My stitched sleeves are better at holding a bound book in place. Hers had less to break, and fifteen years says that counts for something.

John James Saddlers Harness Blunt Point Needles: A set of blunt-point harness needles, five sizes with five needles of each. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Mandala Crafts 150D 0.8mm Black Flat Waxed Thread: A flat waxed polyester thread, 0.8 mm, in black, for hand sewing leather. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Weaver Leather Supply Diamond Leather Stitching Chisel Set: A set of 4 mm diamond stitching chisels for punching saddle-stitch holes. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

WUTA Rawhide Mallet: A rawhide-head mallet for striking chisels and punches. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

General Tools Scratch Awl with Hardwood Handle: A scratch awl with a hardwood handle. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

WUTA Wing Divider: An adjustable stainless steel wing divider for marking a stitch line. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

12-Inch Stainless Steel Metal Ruler with Non-Slip Cork Backing: A 12-inch stainless steel ruler with a non-slip cork back. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

Fiebing’s Gum Tragacanth, 4 oz: A 4 oz bottle of gum tragacanth, a burnishing aid for leather edges. See it on Amazon (affiliate link).

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