If you've got a pile of book pages and fabric scraps sitting in a box waiting for something to happen to them, this tutorial is for you. I show how to make collaged side pockets — tuck spots for your junk journal that hold ephemera, photographs, postcards, little folded notes — built entirely from scraps and sewn together on a sewing machine (or glued, if you prefer). They're quick to make, they use up material you already have, and once they're inside a journal with something tucked in, they look genuinely beautiful.
What we cover
This is a project tutorial for making collaged junk journal pockets from book pages, paper scraps, and fabric scraps. I walk through choosing and layering your materials, sewing everything in place with straight and zigzag stitches, reinforcing fragile pages, and tucking the finished pocket into a journal spread. I also show a small flip-through of several finished pockets so you can see how the technique looks across different material combinations.
What you'll learn
How to build a collaged pocket using the paper-fabric-image layering order — the sequence I always work in: paper down first, then fabric, then a focal image on top. Because the final image touches all the layers beneath it, a single pass of stitching around it holds everything in place at once.
How to tear book pages to determine which side of your journal the pocket faces — a simple directional tear sets your pocket opening to the left or right. It takes about two seconds once you know which way to go.
How to machine-sew a collage together without pre-gluing, including:
- Using a straight stitch around your focal image to anchor all the layers beneath it
- Adding zigzag stitching for texture and character, not just function
- Sewing awkward, irregular-shaped images by stitching only selected sections rather than trying to trace the whole outline
How to use masking tape on the back of a pocket, for two distinct purposes:
- Reinforcing a fragile or very old book page before you sew
- Securing the thread ends at the back so stitches don't unravel over time
Why the focal image shape matters when you're sewing — a clean rectangular image is genuinely easier to stitch around than an organic or irregular one. I show both in this video, and I explain what to do when sewing all the way around an image would mean stitching right over a face.
How to recover when things look off mid-process — add another element. A scrap of lace, an extra piece of paper, a small die cut. It's not patching a mistake; it's how collage actually works. The pockets that ended up looking richest are the ones where I just kept going rather than stopping to second-guess.
How to finish the pocket and glue it into a journal — once the collage is sewn and trimmed, you glue down the two sides to create the pocket opening. I show what it looks like sitting inside an actual journal spread, with and without something tucked in.
Tips & gotchas
Don't spend too long deciding what goes with what. This is the thing that slows people down the most — including me, when I first started making these. Pick a piece of paper, put it down, pick a piece of fabric, put it on top. Make a decision and keep moving. The individual choices matter much less than you think once everything is part of a full journal.
If your book page is very old or fragile, reinforce the back with a small piece of masking tape before you put it near a sewing machine. Masking tape on the back also does double duty as a thread anchor — press your thread ends onto it after sewing and they won't work loose.
When you're choosing your focal image, a simple rectangle is your best friend for machine sewing. Irregular shapes — an organic outline, a figure with arms out — are harder to stitch around cleanly. If you're working with a complex shape, you don't have to sew the whole perimeter. Stitch the sections that need securing and leave the rest. It will still hold.
If you don't have a sewing machine, glue everything down instead. The layering logic is exactly the same; you're just skipping the stitching. The sewn version has a certain texture and character that I love, but the glued version works perfectly well inside a journal.
Once the pocket is inside a journal with something tucked in it — a small card, a folded note, a bit of ephemera — everything reads as part of a whole. Things that looked a little crooked or unbalanced on the worktable disappear completely. Don't judge a pocket on the cutting mat. Judge it in context.
The pockets I was most uncertain about going in are some of the ones I like best now. That's not advice exactly — it's just something I've noticed every time I make a batch of these.
They pair naturally with other junk journal elements: fold one in alongside a sewn signature, tuck them behind a decorated title page, or use them as a resting place for die cuts and stamps that haven't found a home yet. The technique is the same every time, which means the making gets quicker and the results get more confident.
