Tutorial: Embroidered Vintage Vacation Album

One of my favorite projects of the past few years is making personalized photo albums for my daughter celebrating birthday parties, school years, travel and years of friendship with her little buddies.

Her bedroom is decorated in a 1940's light blue, red, pink and splash-of-yellow color scheme (with a whole lotta Cath!), so I try and personalize each album using vintage fabrics and embroidery to match.

My inspiration for her photo album of our recent trip to Mexico is the movie "Easy to Wed" starring Van Johnson, Esther Williams and Lucille Ball -- in fact, it was aired during TCM's tribute week to Ball.

The movie took place in 1940's Mexico, chock full of fabulous retro swimsuits, poolside antics & Mexican performers in colorful costume.

Loving the striped umbrellas and fantastic, ruched swimsuits!

Gorgeous straw hats & a dapper leading man!

A chenille-monogrammed, terry swimsuit robe, I might have to find one of these for ME!

So I went to the home of all fabulous vintage things, Etsy, and found this great length of linen from the 50's, intended to be cut up for dishtowels I believe. Goodness, I loved that cheery flower cart...

I measured the fabric around the photo album, positioning the graphics where I wanted then to show on the front and spine and cut the piece out.  

It was a thick linen, so the color of the album didn't matter in this case, it didn't show through -- but if you choose a thinner fabric, you might want to try and find a close match.

Next, I took the cut out piece of fabric and centered it in an embroidery hoop. I penciled in the word "Mexico" and started outlining the letter using simple, small stitches in a coordinating red floss.

When the embroidery was complete, I lined up the fabric with the photo album and used a simple glue stick to secure it, overlapping the edges on the inside covers and spine. Don't worry about the raw edges showing, we'll cover that up with coordinating paper!

Here's a shot of how I did the spine: I tucked the fabric right in and used loads of glue to secure. It's surprisingly easy and there's plenty of room to maneuver.

And last, I lined the front and back -- with scrapbook paper! (Remember those striped umbrellas from the movie above?) It took a total of 4 pieces of 12 X 12 paper to line up the pattern and cover both ends. 

I measured the first piece of paper on the inside cover, cutting to shape, and it does a great job covering about 2/3 of the inside. 

Then, I took the second piece, measured and cut to shape, lining up the pattern, and trimmed any edges that stuck beyond the original inside paper lining. Repeat with the inside back lining paper!

I always inscribe a little message to my daughter about the trip and put a label with "Handmade with Love from Mommy" in the back!

It does seem quite a bit of work when albums are so easy to grab at Target. 

But to my surprise it was promptly brought in with excitement to show-and-tell.  Even though she's only six, I am proud that SHE takes pride in the special-ness of something handmade.
She gets it :)