If you've ever wanted a journal that rolls up like an ancient map, tucks into a backpack without complaint, and looks like it belongs in a Harry Potter prop room — this tutorial is for you. I'm making a scroll journal completely from scratch: fabric cover, tea-dyed and coffee-dyed pages, three-hole pamphlet stitch binding, eyelet closure, and a charm that slides through the roll to keep everything shut. The whole thing comes together with minimal materials and no special equipment you can't improvise.
What we cover
This tutorial walks through building a scroll journal from the ground up — choosing and cutting your fabric cover, preparing deckle-edged pages with tea dyeing, binding the signature with a pamphlet stitch, and finishing with a fabric strip closure secured by an eyelet and a slim charm. I also show two distinct looks: one where the journal rolls closed completely, and one where the ragged page edges stay visible when it's closed.
What you'll learn
How to choose the right fabric for a scroll cover — not all fabric behaves the same once rolled. Upholstery fabric tends to crease and hold those creases; soft tablecloth material or vinyl with a leathery finish rolls cleanly and stays pliable. I show several options, including how tissue paper and paint can be used to make your own fabric paper cloth if you don't have anything suitable to hand.
How to prepare and size your pages, including:
- Tearing deckled edges with a tear ruler — store-bought, or a DIY version scraped from a plastic ruler along a wire fence (genuinely, that's what I used for years)
- Sizing pages to roughly 8 × 9¾ inches if you want to match what I made, or going smaller if that's what your paper allows
- Folding pages with a gentle curve rather than a crisp crease, so the scroll looks rounded rather than sharp-pointed when closed
How to tea-dye and coffee-dye pages for a rustic finish — I link my full dyeing tutorial separately, but here you'll see how I mixed watercolor paper with 110 GSM drawing paper to get a variety of textures that hold the dye beautifully. The watercolor paper in particular grabs the pigment and gives that old-map quality I was after.
How to bind a signature into a fabric cover using a three-hole pamphlet stitch, including:
- Poking holes through the cover and all pages in a single pass with an awl (or thumbtack — whatever you have)
- Running the stitch out the middle, up through the top, down through the bottom, and back through the middle
- Tying a flat double knot — what I call the S-knot — so the thread sits flush rather than stacking up
The difference between the two cover length options:
- Option one: fabric extends into a front flap that covers all the pages when rolled
- Option two: fabric trimmed to the signature edge so the deckled page edges stay visible — my preference for the rustic look
How to cut and attach a fabric strip closure, including:
- Cutting a slit in the back cover for the strip to thread through — slightly smaller than needed so you can trim to fit rather than cut too wide
- Securing the strip with an eyelet set through multiple fabric layers
- Attaching a charm to the end of the strip so it acts as a toggle when the journal is wrapped closed
Why charm choice matters for a scroll closure — a chunky charm won't thread through a tightly rolled journal. You need something slim and pointed. I go through my box of old broken jewelry and show what works (a slim key, a small pointed pendant) versus what doesn't (anything with bulk on the sides).
Tips & gotchas
Fold your pages gently, not with a hard crease. A crisp fold gives you a pointed spine; a soft fold gives you a curve. For a scroll journal, the curve is exactly what you want — it looks intentional rather than just collapsed.
When you cut the slit for the closure strip, go smaller than you think you need. You can always trim a little more to widen it; you can't close a cut that went too far. I always start tight and work from there.
Charms are trickier than they look. Even a charm that seems reasonably small might have an awkward bulk that catches in the roll. Test it before committing to the eyelet — the journal gets tighter than you expect when the pages are all in, and something that slides through loosely in your hand might not slide through at all once everything is wrapped.
If you don't love the inside of your fabric showing (the wrong side of vinyl or faux leather can look quite stark against tea-dyed pages), the fix is simple: cut the front cover shorter so it doesn't extend past the rolled pages. You won't see the inside at all.
And if the curvature bothers you once the journal is open — just roll it back the other way for a minute. It flattens right out.
It packs flat, it travels well, and it has that quality of looking genuinely old — something between a field journal and a treasure map. Once you've made one, it's hard not to start thinking about variations: multiple closure belts, different fabric papers, a bundle of them displayed together in a box. That's where I ended up. There's a lot of room to make this your own.
